Yosemite Focus of Hearing

Congressional panel to convene a field hearing Tuesday on future of park, especially campsites.

by Michael Doyle and Mark Grossi
Fresno Bee - April 20, 2003

Yosemite National Park campsites certainly have a way of capturing attention.

The park service director flies cross-country to weigh in.

Lawmakers take heed, and protesters gather. Congressionally ordered studies are handled with kid gloves.

It all reflects a level of scrutiny that would be unusual for any park except Yosemite, where disputes often are as massive as the scenery.

The focus is expected to further tighten this week at a congressional subcommittee field hearing -- in Yosemite -- on the future of Yosemite in general and the park's campsites in particular.

"It's a controversial element of the (park) plan that really needs to be addressed," said Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa.

Radanovich's district includes the entire 761,000-acre national park, and stretches into eastern Modesto as well.

As chairman of the House national parks, recreation and public lands subcommittee, the conservative, five-term congressman has more sway than most in how the park is managed.

It enabled him, for example, to order a National Park Service study on the cost and feasibility of restoring park campsites lost in the new year's flooding of 1997. Those campsites are expected to be a central focus of National Park Service Director Fran Mainella and other witnesses at the field hearing.

In the best of times, planning a park visited by more than 3.4 million people annually poses mind-bending challenges. The challenges intensified with the Merced River's record-setting flood of 1997.

It poured a stunning 25,000 cubic feet per second of water across the river's Pohono Bridge. It washed out 361 campsites at the popular Lower Pines and Upper and Lower River campgrounds. It forced officials to craft new plans for Yosemite Valley, but it also offered an opportunity for nature to reclaim its own. The park service's subsequent decision to restore the river floodplain to its natural habitat left some unsatisfied, to say the least.

"I believe campers are the largest proportional users of the park," said Brian Ouzounian, a Santa Monica resident and founder of the Yosemite Valley Campers Coalition. "Comments are solicited from other groups, but we don't get the opportunities to speak."

Supposed lockout fought

Ouzounian, a Yosemite visitor since 1954, is not the only one with a campsite coalition. The new Visitors and Communities for an Open Yosemite, allied with a private property rights organization known for fiery rhetoric, asks activists to "add your voice to the thousands opposed to the Yosemite lockout."

Park service officials chafe at such characterizations. Officials note that the park service developed Yosemite Valley plans with the help of some 11,000 public comments and 18 public hearings. The plans have survived legal challenge.

"The park service has more than adequately found a way to accommodate camping and low-cost overnight accommodations in Yosemite," declared Jay Watson, California representative of The Wilderness Society. "It is time to realize that Yosemite Valley is a finite place."

Nonetheless, disgruntlement simmers within some of Yosemite's gateway communities -- the tourist-dependent towns that provide Radanovich a base of political support.

"The park hasn't done the work to bring this process forward," claimed Dan Carter, executive director of the Yosemite-Sierra Visitors Bureau in Madera County. "There should not be a reduction in campsites or day-use parking."

There are now about 1,500 campsites within the park, including 475 in Yosemite Valley. Several months a year, this supply is far outstripped by demand.

Consequently, Radanovich directed the National Park Service to conduct a special study on restoring at least some of the Yosemite Valley campsites. Separately, the park service studied the feasibility of adding other campsites outside of the heavily traveled valley.

In Yosemite Valley, consultants determined that 144 campsites could be restored for an estimated $18.7 million. Outside the valley, consultants found space for 788 more campsites in places like Foresta and Crane Flat, at an estimated cost of $104 million.

"It will lead to the idea that some of the campgrounds should be replaced, though not all of them," Radanovich said, adding that "there is some flexibility in what kind of camping will be offered."

Money, however, is not the only hurdle.

Consultants say that restoring the 144 Yosemite Valley campsites would require amending the park's much-debated valley plan along with "conducting extensive regulatory compliance." Of the 788 potential campsites outside the valley, 584 would likewise require "extensive compliance" and reopening of the overall plan.

That leaves, according to the new studies, only 204 new campsites outside of Yosemite Valley that could be readily added without taking on the serious hassle of rewriting park planning documents.

"I find little good about the plan," said George Whitmore, chairman of the Sierra Club's Yosemite Committee. "But what makes it palatable is that they're not increasing accommodations, compared to what was here before the flood. The process is so heavily politicized that if you started over now, you might wind up with something that severely impacts the valley."

Tuesday's hearing is set to begin at 10 a.m. near the Yosemite superintendent's old house. Officials said the park entrance fee will be waived for people attending the hearing.