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Brower's
Furor Over Plan for Yosemite Environmentalist denounced
project in final words by Glen Martin Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt will make public a long-awaited plan today intended to reduce the human impact on Yosemite Valley, and it has already drawn fire -- from beyond the grave. When David Brower -- arguably America's most influential environmentalist since John Muir -- died on Nov. 6, he left behind a screed fulminating against the Yosemite Valley Plan, calling it a "greenwash and half-baked." In his written comments, Brower accused the National Park Service of "converting this temple into a profit center, with pricey hotels, scant camping, few modest accommodations, wider roads to field bigger diesel buses, ecological roadside mayhem (and) atmospheric damage statewide . . ." Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club and one of the country's pioneering rock climbers, wrote the critique shortly before he succumbed to cancer at 88. The Chronicle received a copy of the unpublished essay last week. The Yosemite plan, the final version of a draft made public in March, calls for reducing the number of parking spaces and campsites, and removing structures in Yosemite Valley, the heavily paved tourist hub that draws 95 percent of the park's nearly 4 million annual visitors. The battle over the valley plan has raged for years. And although some major environmental groups, such as the Wilderness Society and the Yosemite Restoration Trust, support the final plan, others, including the Sierra Club, are strongly opposed. Brower had turned his attention in recent years to the fate of his beloved park where he had learned to hike and climb. He was greatly disturbed by what he saw as the destruction of Yosemite through piecemeal development sanctioned by the National Park Service, a trend he felt would be codified by the current plan. Brower lambasted the park service's plans to build large parking lots outside Yosemite Valley to accommodate visitors' cars because the sites for the proposed lots were unspoiled and deserving of protection in their own right. Instead, Brower offered his own vision for Yosemite: Scotch all planned parking lots, substitute a rail system and clean-fuel buses for polluting diesel buses, put hotel expansion on hold, expand campgrounds and limit the number of visitors to the park. "Congestion problems are relatively easy to solve," Brower wrote. "As Ansel Adams said, 'When the theater's full, they don't sell lap space.' " Brower credited Frederick Law Olmstead, the 19th century landscape architect who designed New York City's Central Park and advised California on how best to take care of Yosemite Valley, with defining the park's mission: "The first requirement is to preserve the natural scenery and restrict within the narrowest limits the necessary accommodation of visitors." Maybe, Brower wrote, "Olmstead can help all of us, including the National Park Service, remember what the national park idea . . . is all about." Brower railed against past park service decisions in Yosemite, including the widening of Tioga Road that resulted in the destruction of granite domes around Tenaya Lake. But he was especially angry at recent widening and straightening of Highway 140 along the Merced River canyon. "When I see the war zone that used to be the Merced River Gorge in Yosemite, " Brower wrote, "I am furious that the criminals (who) pushed this project through in violation of the National Environmental Protection Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act are allowed to continue their shoddy planning in the rest of the park rather than taking some time out to rethink (in jail, preferably)." The plan for Yosemite Valley, which will take 10 to 15 years to carry out, is expected to cost about $343 million. But that, Brower said, is Yosemite's biggest problem -- too much money. "(The park's development projects show) what you can do when you have two or three hundred million dollars to spend instead of the discipline former National Parks Service Director Newton Drury enjoyed when he said, 'We have no money, we can do no harm.' " HIGHLIGHTS FROM YOSEMITE PLAN Details from the National Park Service's draft plan, released earlier this year, for reducing congestion in Yosemite National Park: -- Restoration of 180 acres to their natural state, including Ahwahnee and Stoneman meadows, by removing roads, trails and buildings. -- Expanding shuttle service to help reduce the number of vehicles entering part of the popular Yosemite Valley from 7,200 on a typical busy day to about 3, 100. Parking spaces in the valley would be reduced from 1,662 to 550. -- Reducing the number of campsites from 475 to 465. More than 100 would be walk-in campsites, accessible on foot but without nearby parking. -- Reducing the number of lodging rooms in the valley from 1,260 to 981. -- Replacing a 3.2-mile section of Northside Drive, a main artery through the valley, with a paved foot and bike trail. -- Removing three bridges and a dam to reduce erosion along the Merced River. -- Eliminating commercial horseback rides through the valley. Source: Associated Press |
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