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By Michael
Doyle
Fresno Bee - December 7, 1998
WASHINGTON - Yosemite National Park planning is getting unified again.Hoping
to shape a more coherent future for the popular park, Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt will announce today that previously separate Yosemite planning efforts
will be bound together into a comprehensive plan.
The new Draft Yosemite Valley Plan will combine and coordinate previously
separate plans involving housing, transportation, Yosemite Falls and Yosemite
Lodge. The unified plan, which officials hope will ease the litigious controversy
surrounding Yosemite Valley's future, is supposed to be made public in May.
"It's pretty significant," said Yosemite's chief strategic planner, Chip Jenkins.
"People have been telling us that the status quo at Yosemite is just not acceptable.
People really want Yosemite to be a better place."
People also have been bringing Yosemite officials to court.
A Sierra Club lawsuit against the park's plans for flood-damaged Yosemite
Lodge complained about the park's fragmented planning, and succeeded in stopping
lodge restoration plans.
In granting a preliminary injunction against the work, U.S. District Judge
Charles R.Breyer cited Yosemite's failure to "formally consider the cumulative
impact" of the lodge along with other park plans.
Park officials pledged to come back with a better plan, which Jenkins said
would be folded into the unified Yosemite Valley document.
"I don't think that this is just a bureaucratic planning tool," said Jay Watson,
San Francisco-based regional director for The Wilderness Society. "I think
we'll see some real changes. It certainly holds the promise to make great
changes."
For the 4 million people who visit Yosemite annually, unified planning could
mean eye-catching changes.
The transportation element will determine how many day-use parking spaces
remain in Yosemite Valley, where the spaces will be, and where visitors using
future mass transit will arrive. More cars are using Yosemite Valley than
can be easily squeezed into the Valley's roughly 3,700 day-use spots, and
Jenkins indicated that car traffic may be cut by about half.
The Yosemite Falls element will specify how officials, using money raised
by the Yosemite Fund, expect to redesign a beautiful area now undermined by
an ugly parking lot, degraded trails, deficient bathrooms and other man-made
shortcomings.
The housing element will determine how many park service and concession employees
will live in Yosemite Valley, and where. About 100 park and 950 concession
workers now live there.
"It's certain there will be a significant reduction," Jenkins said.
Park officials had hoped to have the housing plan ready by early next year.
"On the one hand, it's a little bit of a delay for that," Jenkins said. "On
the other hand, we think we're going to get to better decisions."
By announcing the new comprehensive planning effort himself, at a Washington
news conference accompanied by leaders of several environmental organizations,
Babbitt is also recognizing the political visibility of the Yosemite effort.
Park officials have received 1,500 letters on housing plans, and 2,000 people
have attended workshops on development.
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