Court Orders Halt to Yosemite Work

by Russell Clemings
Fresno Bee - April 21, 2004

A federal appeals court set aside a lower court ruling Tuesday and ordered an immediate halt to road work and other construction in Yosemite Valley.

In a two-page order, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals appears to say the National Park Service must revise its plan for managing the Merced River corridor before moving ahead with the road work and more than $100 million in other projects from its long-delayed valley improvement plan.

"There are seven projects right now that it stops," Yosemite National Park spokesman Scott Gediman said.

The order directs U.S. District Court Judge Anthony W. Ishii to reconsider his ruling last month allowing construction to proceed while the park service corrects two flaws that the appeals court had found earlier in the park's Merced River plan.

Those flaws dealt with deciding how many people can visit the river, a congressionally designated "wild and scenic river," and defining its boundaries. Ishii ruled in late March against two activist groups -- Friends of Yosemite Valley and Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth -- when they sought to stop construction while the flaws were corrected. But the appeals court said that ruling resulted from "a misconstruction" of its earlier order.

"Pursuant to our original opinion, the National Park Service must prepare a new or revised [Merced River plan] that adequately addresses user capacities and properly draws the river boundaries," Tuesday's appeals court order read. The order granted the groups' request for an injunction barring further construction until the district court reconsiders its ruling.

Sharon Duggan, a lawyer for the two groups, welcomed the ruling: "We hope now that they will do it right so that what happens is good for the river and good for the people."

The two groups had asked the appeals court for an emergency order last week, as workers took chain saws to a cluster of towering Ponderosa pines near Yosemite Lodge as part of the Northside Drive relocation. Work on that project halted Tuesday when word of the appeals court order reached Yosemite officials, Gediman said.

"We are complying with the court order," he said late Tuesday. "We are complying with it as of about one hour ago, when we got it."

Gediman said park service officials are confident, however, that they will be able to address the appeals court's concerns when the case returns to Ishii's courtroom in Fresno.