The Fight Is Not Over

Nearly 100 years ago conservationist John Muir and magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson sat at a campfire at Soda Springs in Tuolumne Meadow and sketched out plans to protect the Yosemite high country. From that conversation in the wilderness came congressional legislation and creation of Yosemite National Park. At Soda Springs this Saturday ceremonies will honor the late Ansel Adams, whose camera captured the images that many Americans hold of Yosemite and whose fighting words helped carry on the crusade that started with Muir and Johnson to shield Yosemite from the noisy devices of progress. The ceremonies will double as a reminder that the fight is not over, and probably never will end.

The park officials, politicians and people who simply love the park will gather to dedicate Mount Ansel Adams. This triangular peak in the Lyell Fork looking down on Tuolumne Meadow was first climbed by the famous photographer in 1924. It was named for him by friends in 1934, and last year the name was made official by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names.

Adams knew as well as anyone that the work of preventing “a blemish on the face of Venus” is perpetual, as witness the federal government’s indifference to the financial needs of many national parks these days. A private campaign to raise funds for maintenance at Yosemite is laudable, but is no substitute for government’s obligation to pay rangers, repair buildings and roads and keep the park whole.

Another blemish is developing, waiting to deface the very entrance to the park. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering a private developer’s application to construct a small hydroelectric dam on the Merced River at El Portal, 100 yards outside the park.

A federal law passed in 1978 encourages development of such projects by requiring public utilities to buy electricity from them at prices attractive to developers. But the older Federal Power Act prohibits projects that would affect national parks, and the proposed dam certainly fits that description.

State Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, the Mariposa County supervisors and the area’s congressman, Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Fresno), oppose the project. Environmentalists want the Merced placed under the protection of the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

David Wright, a top National Park Service official, told the commission that the dam would back water 50 to 60 feet upstream into the park. That doesn’t sound like a major disruption, but it is enough to trigger the part of the law that protects national parks. Visitors arriving at Yosemite would travel by a dammed-up river, not a splendidly rippling stream. But its damage to business and recreation in El Portal would be even worse. The dam would divert water into a tunnel and dump it back into the river five miles downstream, effectively drying up the river as it flows through El Portal, where it is the town’s centerpiece.

Ansel Adams photographed the Merced River in its many seasons. His friends, gathered this weekend, would do him no greater honor than to pledge continued protection for the Merced so that the Adams photographs will reflect living reality, not a strangled river.