The Loma Prietan
June/July 1999
Park Service Plans to Urbanize Yosemite
by Joyce M. Eden and Greg Adair
The coming six to eight months will shape the future of Yosemite National Park for the next century. Preservationists have now worked for one hundred years to push back the tide of human development in the Park, and particularly in Yosemite Valley. With these very goals in mind, Yosemite's General Management Plan (GMP) was drafted, with extensive public input, as a plan to decrease Yosemite's human development and increase ecological restoration.
The battle for the 1980 GMP was a major environmental victory which stood as a beacon for the environmental future of all the national parks. But now, the very heart of Yosemite's GMP is threatened. If planners and commercial interests are not stopped, the cherished public goal of Yosemite's restoration will be swept aside for another century by a development boom such as has never been seen in Yosemite. The result will be extensive construction on the ground in the Valley as early as next winter.
The crisis is real. This rash of new development plans is being backed by almost two hundred million dollars for immediate construction. How could this happen?
Yosemite received an unprecedented gift of $190 million following the floods of 1997. At first, environmentalists supported this gift. While one would have guessed that this money would benefit Yosemite, it has instead become a curse. Soon after the flood, much of the damage was repaired. Yet, because this money is of a magnitude more than is needed for flood repairs, Park planners found themselves awash in a glut of dollars looking for projects.
Money Leads to Crisis
No-strings-attached public money has paradoxically brought Yosemite to a point of crisis in the form of a series of lavishly funded new plans to expand human development. As a matter of public relations, planners stress the positive aspects of hotel, road, or parking developments and refer to them often as "restoration." The reality is just the opposite.
The influence of commercial interests has played a role, as has a certain mind set of Park planners seeking to develop and engineer lavish "improvements" to the Park - bigger (and more exclusive) hotels, expanded restaurants, roadways, and parking. Sadly, the very plans which Sierra Club loudly protested in the early 1990s as betrayals of Yosemite's GMP have now become the centerpiece of the new planning, and these are joined by projects never dreamed of in leaner times.
These plans would result in a dramatic restructuring of the Park into a resort destination with increased urban amenities. The footprint of human development would expand. In the process additional natural areas of the Park are being and would be destroyed.
Most Sierra Club members are shocked when they hear this. They were under the impression that the flood of Jan 1997 would result in a decrease in the human footprint of commercialization, structures and amenities in Yosemite and that the flood was a once in a lifetime opportunity to respect what the River has wrought - to reclaim much of the natural environment and experience of Yosemite. Unfortunately, if the Park planners have their way the opposite will be true.
El Portal Widening Under Way
Already natural areas of the Park are being destroyed by a massive engineering project to widen and straighten the El Portal Road which runs along the Merced River Canyon. This project is currently under litigation by the Sierra Club and MERG (Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth). The project is causing destruction to 7.5 miles of previously intact riparian and woodland habitat. This narrow winding Canyon is being dynamited along the uphill slope and filled with soil, concrete and rip rap on the downhill slope into the River itself.
Instead of protecting this precious, rare area of the Sierra Nevada, Park planners are destroying it. Now these rich habitats, virtually unchanged since the last ice age and filled with numerous listed species, have undergone an unprecedented amount of destruction. They can never be restored to their previous condition, nor can the rare bats buried under rock and mud and the centuries old Black Oaks in which they roosted be brought back. Instead of making this road safer as claimed, it will be more dangerous and less stable. No Environmental Impact Study for this massive project within the federal Wild and Scenic River corridor was done. The court hearing will be June 14, 1999.
The Sierra Club, Friends of Yosemite Valley (FOYV), MERG, and other groups held two protests along the Canyon in opposition to this plan. Previous to this, the Sierra Club won a lawsuit against the Park's Yosemite Lodge Plan. This plan would have built 37 new buildings, including 30 expensive new motels, cutting down Swan Slabs Woodland. It would have also built 5 three-story dormitories next to the only walk-in campground in the Valley, moved the road into the riparian zone and paved over acres for new parking. This legal victory stopped that construction temporarily.
Around the same time, the Park put out the Valley Implementation Plan (VIP). It was a piecemeal and deficient development plan including new upscale construction at Curry and clear cutting 25 acres in the west end of Yosemite Valley for a new parking structure with a new commercial zone including a visitor center and restaurant. All this with no comprehensive transportation plan for Yosemite. As a result of our lawsuits, and the planners recognition of the legal deficiencies of their loudly touted "restoration" plan, the Secretary of the Interior scuttled that plan and rolled the Lodge and the VIP plan into a new (Yosemite) Valley Plan.
We have one chance to reverse this push towards development. The Draft Valley Plan (VP) replaces the VIP Plan. The Valley Plan will contain the Lodge, Curry and parking lot developments. All this planning is again going on with no comprehensive transportation plan for Yosemite. The VP is expected to be released in early winter, 1999. Check our web site for updates - we will need your letters before then.
As the natural environment is degraded by construction projects present and planned, so the very purpose of National Parks is being undermined and perverted. This trend in Yosemite could set the stage for further development throughout the Park system. Yet the National Park Service was founded under a clear mandate: protect the natural, cultural and scenic beauty and the wild life therein unimpaired for future generations. The Sierra Club supports visitation to Yosemite for its natural values. The Park was not intended as a resort destination and this is affirmed in the GMP for Yosemite.
Can We Protect Yosemite?
Yosemite sets a bellwether - it's a model for other Parks. It shapes the public vision of what a National Park should be. What happens in the front country in Yosemite will inevitably spread and effect the back country. Many activists work hard to get lands designated as public lands in order to "permanently" protect them. Those of us who work on already designated public lands know that there is no permanent protection. One of the best things we can all do for all the lands we hope to protect is to strengthen the protection of Yosemite. The public has a right to experience in Yosemite the natural values for which it was saved.
What To Do
Write, fax or call our representatives. Make 2 or 3 points in your own words:
- These plans violate the public trust and they are a violation of the Park Service's mandate to protect Yosemite "unimpaired" for future generations.
- These plans increase development and its impacts - they are a sell out to corporate profits.
Note that while we appreciate the spirit of goodwill in which this money was appropriated, it is being misspent and is an unnecessary boondoggle. The Park has "recovered" from the flood.
I
t is these development plans which will damage the Park. Ask our representatives to freeze this money and either refund it to the Treasury or consider using it, as the General Management Plan envisions, to complete the eastern watershed of the Park over the Tioga Pass.
Ask Senator Boxer and Representative Miller to tell Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt to stop these plans.
Senator Barbara Boxer
(Attn: Jody Linkert)
Hart Bldg #112
Wash DC 20510
Phone (202) 224-3553, fax (202) 228 4056.
Representative George Miller
(Attn: Rick Healy)
Rayburn Bldg #2205
Wash DC 20515
Phone (202) 225-6065, fax (202) 225-5609.
Joyce M Eden and Greg Adair are members of the regional Yosemite Committee. Reach them at (408) 973-1085 or Sierra Club - Yosemite Website.