Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Merced River (Yosemite) Plan Comment Period

I just got notice that the Merced River Plan is open for public comment Info Here NPS has chosen Alternative 5 as preferred. Not as radical as some had feared earlier, but interesting nonetheless:

One bridge removal (Sugar Pine) instead of 3
Camp 4 gets 35 more sites
Merced Lake High Serra Camp units reduced by half, beds reduced by over 2/3

The site linked here has the full plan, 20 page summary and alternatives matrix, comment procedure, etc.

Of course the whole discussion could be academic. Budget for all but the no-action alternative is ~ 235 million . . .

This has been out since January, comment period ends April 18 I believe. The devil is in the details, but the summary of Alt 5 looks modest, reasonable, and least likely to draw lawsuits.

I still question the validity of using a recreational reach of a river through a heavily used Yosemite Valley (Not wild and scenic through the valley) to justify changes to visitor use, road access, businesses, lodging numbers, camping, employee housing, traffic flow, etc. It will be interesting to see if this draws a legal challenge on principle. My understanding of the intent of the W&S law is to protect actual wild and scenic reaches and just keep the other areas from being impaired or diverted. These other complex issues in the valley are more appropriately addressed in a Yosemite management plan.

The last try for a Yosemite management plan was stopped by lawsuits during construction (there's still evidence of interrupted road and utility construction). By moving these issues into a W&S plan, it could be headed for a similar fate. The only chance it has of not ending in court is to not cause serious impacts to any group that is likely to sue. Seems like that's what they're trying to do.

As Dog wrote, it could all be moot since it takes money to do anything and the sequester cuts are already hitting bone in the NPS. I think most people traveling to the park would rather have a traffic controller for their plane landing and enough Rangers on duty.