Disney World in the High Sierra

EVEN JOYCE MAYNARD couldn't have chosen a better scenario. In 1969 the U.S. Forest Service announced its approval of a plan for a mammoth, year-round resort in California's Mineral King valley, 16,000 acres of national forest land high in the southern Sierra Nevada. Controversy erupts, fueled by the public's revived awareness of environmental abuse. Behind the contested $35-40 million project is not ITT but the corporation created by a childhood exemplar of the Leave-It-to-Beaver generation--the father of Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck, Walt Disney. Thus fell another idol of Maynard's generation.

It has been six years since the Forest Service revealed its plans; the uproar over Mineral King's proposed fate has long subsided. Many who once railed against the resort have forgotten the issue. In fact, overall public enthusiasm for protecting America's air, water and other natural resources has fizzled. The focus of the environmental movement has shifted from mass action and mass awareness of Earth Day (1970) to a low-profile pattern of political and legal efforts by underfunded environmental organizations.

This type of relatively quiet resistance has so far headed off construction of the Mineral King resort.

First, a suit filed by the Sierra Club forced the Forest Service to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a crucial, recently passed environmental law. The court victory delayed action on Mineral King for several years; the Forest Service took until December 1974 to publish the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on the project mandated by NEPA.

The draft EIS was showered with criticism during the legally required three-month period for public comment. Although the Forest Service claims that 56 percent of the responses favored development; California's sharp rejection of the EIS reflects the views of many that the Mineral King impact statement was far from impartial. The state's Secretary for Resources wrote that the draft EIS was "premature" and that it appears to be "a conclusionary rather than a questioning document." This and other critical letters forced the Forest Service back to its drawing board; to patch up flagrant weaknesses in the draft and probably to scale down the project somewhat before filing a final EIS before this January. When that happens, the entire case will return to court, where the Sierra Club suit is awaiting the final EIS.

ALTHOUGH THE Mineral King controversy has virtually disappeared from the front pages, it is still an important battle for the environmental movement. There are strong arguments against turning this valley into a bustling resort. Visitors protest that its beauty is unique and should be preserved in an increasingly developed Sierra Nevada. A resort in the valley could also have an adverse impact on nearby Sequoia National Park, which virtually surrounds Mineral King. For example, development could force wildlife out of the valley into the park. A prime candidate for such an exodus is the Mineral King deer herd, which now winters where Disney plans a parking lot, migrates along the planned route of a cog railway, and fawns in the middle of the village site.

Mineral King has also taken on a symbolic meaning, since it embraces many issues tied to the expanding American search for energy and society's attempts to pillage shrinking wilderness reserves. Not surprisingly, the Mineral King draft EIS--a voluminous tome whose cover pictures the resort's ersatz-Swiss-chalet-style village--tends to ignore larger issues.

One such question: should the federal government encourage resorts that use up huge amounts of energy and spoil remaining forest and park lands? In its EIS, the Forest Service claimed that failure to develop Mineral King could leave as much as one-third of the 1985-86 Southern California skier demand unaccomodated. (Subsequent public comment showed that this statistic had been computed incorrectly). It is at best questionable whether a country trying to cut energy consumption should feel obliged to meet a demand for skiing with a resort that draws 22 million kilowatts per year, or about 40,000 barrels of oil. The resort would encourage heavy gasoline consumption since it would give Los Angeles residents easier access to skiing. Nowhere in the EIS does the Forest Service justify its assumption that the U.S. government should give Southern Californians more places to ski. They live in a sunny climate all year. Is it the federal government's role to give them winter sports too, when the costs to the environment is so high?

The Mineral King resort would also sacrifice scarce wilderness for the benefit of the affluent. According to the Sierra Club a week for two in Mineral King would cost about $600, while the same trip to a major ski resort in Utah, including air fare from Los Angeles, would cost $580. Even the Forest Service's EIS admits that travel prices, "not counting food and lodging, are prohibitive to use of the proposed development by low income people and create to some extent, economic barriers even to moderate income families."

THOSE FIGHTING the Mineral King plan are concentrating on legal and legislative remedies. Previous experience in the U.S. Congress offers little encouragement; legislation adding Mineral King to Sequoia National Park, where it should have been all along, has been consistently introduced and ignored. This year three identical bills in the House have attracted over 65 cosponsors, but supporters have been unable to get subcommittee hearings in the House or any sympathy from the two Democratic Senators from California, Alan Cranston and John V. Tunney.

The legal route may be the environmentalists' best hope. So far NEPA has delayed construction but its usefulness is limited. Specialists in environmental law say that it is difficult to win a "second generation" NEPA case--a challenge of the federal government's final decision once it has met the "first generation" or procedural NEPA requirements to assess impact. Fortunately the Sierra Club's suit is based on other environmental laws that may allow the club's lawyers to delay the project indefinitely or even kill it entirely.

Somehow, in spite of environmentalists' success in blocking the resort, Mineral King's transition from an issue pushed by public pressure to one backed by legal maneuvering is discouraging. Of course the controversy has had its good moments: for one, the Disney Corporation has learned its lesson, is letting the Forest Service handle the project, and is concentrating on its plans for a resort near Lake Tahoe with the advice of the Sierra Club.

But it seems clear that America's enthusiasm for the environmental movement has receded far from its Earth Day peak, when Capitol Hill anxious to capitalize on the popular issue passed much of the legislation now crucial to the ecology movement. This year environmentalists lobbying on the Hill are finding it increasingly difficult to pass or renew important legislation. It's anyone's guess how long the lawyers can hold on with only the legislative spoils of the past.