NPS is trying to do 'Somehing'(?) about the 1987 long forgotten WILD AND SCENIC RIVER legal designation,,,(Republican President Reagan's second term, natch) designation of the Merced River, INSIDE Yosemite National Park as if That was not enough protection. What is the ulterior motive now, under Democrat President Obama ? Is NPS on LSD, again??

The Merced River and its Yosemite Valley are certainly "Scenic".  But official and legal "Wild and Scenic River" designation,,,!? What the he-ll is NPS, Congress, and President's Reagan(dead)and Obama(politically in trouble) up to !?  This is not, i firmly believe, about the Merced River inside and outside Yosemite National Park. A river inside a National Park does not need special, above all else!, protection, if NPS is doing a good job of managing and protection the whole National Park. So What is that D.C. swamp and the Federal Government really up to ??


 Is the Tuolumne River designated a "Wild and Scenic River" with San Francisco's damn dam Inside the National Park and a water delivery system in decades of disrepair, like our national infrastructure?  Let's move SF's dam that Never Ever should have been built Inside a National Park no matter how much SF was crying about the ill built and unprepared 1906 earthquake town damage, outside into the National Forest, before we let sly politicians pull the wool over our eyes about their real intent for Yosemite Valley. For years there was a sign in the public reception and lounge areas of the Ahwahnee Hotel "This hotel bla bla bla and its lounges are for Hotel Guests only", as if the rich that could afford it were more entitled than another other park visitor at $5 to $20 park entrance car fee guest to walk in and enjoy the Ahwahnee Hotel lounge ! They over the years raised the lowest priced breakfast option, pancakes in the famous Dining Room, so high, over $20, in a rude attempt to keep the average or poor visitor out of the Ahwahnee, it became an obvious embarrasment and the price of pancakes was lowered.  OK, so the rich don't want to share Yosemite Valley with the  public/masses; The public is getting fed up with the arrogant, selfish,exclusionary, anti-American abuses of the rich. 


At the junction of Hwy 140 and Hwy 120, near the entrance to Yosemite Valley and On the Merced River, there was a CONCRETE DAM, for decades!! When NPS took it out, the Spring rise in waterflow of the Merced took out the 100 YARDS OF ROADBED AND ROAD, before where the dam USE TO BE !!  Talk about idiots planning in NPS management !!   Yeah, lets take out that dam for power generation,,, and then watch as the Merced River rises every Spring,,, maybe it won't take out that old weak road bed and major road,,, costing $Ms to repair and replace ,,, plus all the slow contractor traffic delays, for months,,, This is the poor par of Park Service. Who was That Superintendent !?


There are car and pedestrian bridges, yes, more than one,,,at least 5 major ones just in the Valley,,, across the Merced River in Yosemite Valley, and for that reason alone, there is NO WAY any sane person can call Yosemite Valley's Merced River "wild".  Thus, there is no basis for the legal 1987 "Wild AND Scenic River" legal designation of the Merced River INSIDE Yosemite National Park; It does neither the National Park nor its millions of visitors every year ANY GOOD. Unless you too don't like crowds of over 4 million tourist a year, mostly in Summer, mostly in the Valley next to the Merced River.  More reason/s would be that , the Merced River's terminal moraine was dynamited by an early white guy-resident back in the mid-late 1800s, turning the Merced River in Yosemite Valley from a swampy wet mosquito-infested, diseased in Spring, more meadow then than forest now place.  This MAJOR MISTAKE,environmental act/accident is seldom discussed, but certainly NPS is not recommending restoring the terminal moraine and causing more flooding in the Merced River's Yosemite Valley,and more disease carrying mosquitos,,, and LESS VISITOR ACCESS,,, are they? They already took away my favorite childhood campground, Upper and Lower River Campground, because of "flooding", when minor flooding has been going on in Yosemite Valley for centuries! A park ranger taught me that. And with few fatalities and no major visitor uproar.  So why is NPS, under President Obama, on another major fool's errand? Meetings in 2007(Pres. Bush43,ugh) and 2010(Obama, too!?).


NPS has done and proposed some truly Stupid ideas lately.  In the last 10 years, i have heard NPS rangers say that they would like to take out Northside Drive, the 2 one way lanes on the Yosemite Falls side of the Valley that are used to exit the Valley or drive the famous and super-popular Valley Tour loop in the open air trailer called the "Green Dragon", that was gasoline but is now running on natural gas and dragging 50-70 avid fans around in the open air, no walls, no ceiling, cab and a trailer full of benches. That would go away if NPS has its extreme way in this silly, ulterior motive "Wild and Scenic River" legal nightmare designation action.  No more full moon, Moonlight Moonbow in the Waterfalls Valley Tours!?!  NPS's idea is to just have Southside Drive and convert it from 2 lanes of one way traffic IN, to ONE LANE IN, next to, ONE LANE OUT !!  NPS has been advocating removing the car entirely from Yosemite Valley for decades. So impractical. 


The regional bus system,YARTS, is under-used, but an extreme value from places like Mammoth Mtn. on the east side of the Sierra's, for cheap!!  I doubt the Summer Visitor traffic would like this plan of "just Southside Drive",one lane in and one lane out, when the wait at the Arch Rock Gate on 140 or the 120 hwy gate in the NW corner are sometimes a 30 minute wait to get IN the park,,, then hours of circling to park, now at former 'Camp6' near Yosemite Village and the Merced River. But WSR designation implementation/action would remove that much needed visitor parking,,, also beloved guest lodging in the Valley, and also beloved employee housing in the Valley that i lived in, shared tent in snowing winters and shared dormitory rooms for 2, for 10 years.


Like, did you hear the one that President Clinton had the NPS , for years, push a Large , multi-story, HIGH RISE PARKING GARAGE, out of 'natural-appearing concrete'  next to ,,,BRIDALVEIL FALLS !?  Even if President Clinton is now believable that this ploy was 'just a bargaining chip', according to a YNP ranger , NPS should never have endorsed it on Principle alone.  The NPS duty is to 'protect the national park and provide for the public enjoyment of the national park'.  President Clinton being a liar and shameful President we need no further examples of. (Signing the death of the critical and famous Depression era, safer banking law, Glass-Steagal Act,,, ouch, President Clinton!)  Back to the crazy ideas of the NPS, Congress and Presidents.


Did you hear about the 'proposed' aerial tram from the Valley to Glacier Point?  How about CLOSING THE ONLY GAS STATION IN YOSEMITE VALLEY at the Lodge, which NPS did ?!! The only gasoline and diesel gas station for the public in the Valley ! Really?  Yep. Sooo Stupid. How about starting  to permanently CLOSE CAMP 4, THE ROCK CLIMBER'S CAMP opposite Yosemite Lodge,,, and getting SUED IN FEDERAL COURT by the many uber-rich "dirtbag" rock climbers, and loosing "!!  Sooo EMBARRASSING for NPS and the Feds !!  And embarrassing for we taxpayers and voters and legal residents and foreign visitors,,, What kind of an Idiot do you have to be to be in NPS upper level management and not refuse to do these dumb things !?


Because NPS could not even do crowd control back in the 1960s and 70s with just polite Naturalists, or keep people out of  tiny Stoneman Meadow at Curry Village with simple temporary fencing-duh!-, and all over the roads instead, THE FAMOUS FIREFALLS WAS STOPPED. Because of NPS incompetence, not the 'environmental' concern they now profess back in the 1970s.  I lived in the Valley for 10 years, (thought i wanted to be a Ranger), but drove shuttle buses and tour buses,,, and for many childhood visits with family and the 24-7 experience of working there, even if for icky MCA(Y.P.C.Co.), i love the Merced River and the Yosemite Valley and the whole Yosemite National Park even more.


When i was living there in the Valley, i found out the tow truck drivers based out of the Yosemite Village Garage were allowed to service in the garage the public's cars, along with the formal mechanic trained , official "mechanics".   And the public was kept in the dark.  When i complained about how unsafe it was to let , inside a National Park, the Concessionaire have such low standards as to allow tow truck drivers without any formal mechanics training to secretly work on the public's broken down or just in need of a tune-up cars, i was told i was being a nuisance and might loose my job by the current Superintendent.  How many unaware people had their cars and RVs worked on by this horrible permitted policy and untrained, unlicensed, bonehead tow truck drivers? Out of this same garage , i had multiple double decker bus engine fires, one bus loose ALL steering near Chinquapin on the way to Glacier Point, and one new bus with the MCA-YPCCo executives loose ALL brakes at the Valley elementary school the day the Queen of England visited.


Delaware North(employees are not happy in Yosemite) of New York, who bought the Concessionaire rights from MCA, ick!, does not seem to be interested in doing more than one Valley Tour in the open air tram per hour, when MCA would do 2/hr if the demand was there, as it usually is. MCA made huge profits off many raft rentals and the frequent raft shuttles down to El Cap, but DN is not interested. And NPS lets DN make important decisions for the Park !?  Yikes!  So both the current Concessionaire and NPS in Yosemite , the Superintendent, are allowing less normal routine access and education and public enjoyment in the super famous Yosemite Valley.  Why does Yosemite get so many bench-warming embarrassment Superintendents, as if the public does not expect better? And the newspapers published articles of the embarrassment of the federal court judge in the Yosemite Valley , self-proclaimed 'Hanging Judge' ,terrorizing John Muir's "Cathedral" distracted car drivers and busy,SF-based,5 hrs away, bus drivers?


The Curry Mtn. Shop fire was probably arson, due to the facts, but not properly prosecuted, DUE TO NPS INCOMPETENCE and Fed's lack of will.  The Glacier Point Hotel fire was also suspect.  NPS ,for the 10 YEARS i lived in the Valley, could not catch the one major drug dealer everyone knew, supplying some of the low wage seasonal and permanent employees with marijuana, cocaine, mushrooms, etc., illegal drugs out of Oakland.  From 1976 to 1980s , NPS law enforcement rangers with cruisers and guns looked the other way at the large volume of just one company's speeding buses coming daily from SF to Merced town, and through Yosemite Valley to the Ahwahnee Hotel for lunch. It made one SF tour bus company owner a multi-millionaire, "lunch at the Ahwahnee Hotel" in his brochure,,, like "biodiesel" today is a $buzz word.


So any President's NPS is certainly flawed,sometimes major flawed.  So should we be for this insanity and what it would do to change the Yosemite National Park experience, in Yosemite Valley along the Merced River, or should we all say 'bad idea!', and 'WSR de-list! before you kick all but the rich out' ?  NPS spent years and huge political capital with the 1970s YOSEMITE MASTER PLAN process,,, to end up chucking all the $M spent on similar beautiful maps and expensive brochures and all the public's con-ed 'valuable input'. NPS's summary was 'ban all cars'. What a waste of their time and our time and OUR tax MONEY !!  I still have all that expensive to produce, "Master Plan" material in a cardboard box somewhere.


Why would President Obama 'OK' 2 new nuclear reactors in Georgia ,after what happened in super high tech. Japan, right before his second election campaign??,,, and now allow the NPS to do something so stupid, again, as seriously propose dramatic action on the forgotten 1987 addition by Reagan's Congress of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley as a legally designated "WILD AND SCENIC RIVER" ? Why !?  What is the real reason and purpose?


If you too have fallen in love with John Muir's live and work place, Yosemite Valley, please join me in writing and calling President Obama, your Senator, any Senator!, your Representative, any Representative! and ask them to stop this NONSENSE immediately. De-list the Merced River, already Inside the Yosemite National Park's ultimate protection, as a "Wild and Scenic River" as it does Yosemite and us no good. We like and love, Yosemite National Park pretty much the way it is !
Thank you.