Yosemite Valley Plan Violates U.S. Rules, Judge Says

A federal district court judge has rejected Yosemite National Park’s revised management plan for the Merced River -- a decision that park officials warned Thursday might block numerous construction projects in the park’s popular valley.

Judge Anthony Ishii in Fresno concluded that the park violated the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and failed to adequately follow federal environmental rules in its river protection plan.

He also criticized park officials for not going far enough in conducting a user-capacity study, a planning document that some environmentalists hope will usher in limits on the number of daily visitors in the mile-wide Yosemite Valley.

Ishii said park officials had given “no indication when, if ever,” they would finally adopt a user-capacity system required by federal rules.

“There should be a system in place that guarantees visitors have access to Yosemite Valley under conditions where they’re not just swimming in a tide of people,” said Greg Adair, director of Friends of Yosemite Valley, which pursued the court challenge.

Park officials expressed dismay over Ishii’s 50-page ruling, which could halt several critical improvement projects in Yosemite Valley, which is cleaved by the meandering Merced River.

Among the work that could be stopped is a long-awaited face-lift for Yosemite Lodge and relocation of a traffic bottleneck nearby.

Further projects would include expanding day-use parking and constructing additional campground spaces.

Those remodeling efforts were among many ordered as part of a $442-million effort to modernize and shift mankind’s footprint in Yosemite Valley after an epic flood in 1997 washed away many buildings, roads and bridges.

“We’ve been moving forward, and we want to continue doing that,” said Scott Gediman, a Yosemite spokesman.

“We feel the upcoming projects benefit the river, benefit the visitor experience, benefit the park,” Gediman added. “This is what the American public and Congress asked us to do.”

Both sides expect to go to court in coming weeks to argue before Ishii over whether the judge should order the valley construction work halted until the park can produce a Merced River plan that passes muster.

Though some environmental organizations supported the Yosemite rebuilding effort, Adair’s group and Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth sued over what they said was an overly urbanized development effort straddling the banks of the Merced River, particularly as it winds through the traffic-choked valley.

The lawsuit bounced through the federal courts until the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004 reversed an earlier ruling by Ishii and ordered the Park Service to rework its Merced River plan. Park officials undertook that effort over the months that followed, filing a new plan last year.

But the two groups renewed their legal challenge, saying the new draft didn’t go far enough to establish daily visitor limits and proper restraints on new development.

“The Park Service has frankly been very eager to get around the responsibility of doing a serious job on environmental protection,” Adair said.

He said the hope is to put a stop to the park’s expansion efforts in the valley and “ask the question of how much human use and how many hotel rooms can this place support while still protecting environmental values.”

One of the most controversial topics could be a cap on day-use visitors, an idea embraced by Adair and some Sierra Club members.

In the mid-1990s, the Park Service came under heat after it briefly closed Yosemite’s gates during peak afternoon summer hours because of crowding.

Adair and others envision a day-use reservation system similar to the park’s backcountry permit requirement, which has been in effect for several decades.