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Wawona residents press board to seek restoration of 20‑year MOU with National Park Service over water, county proposes planning grant approach
Summary
Wawona residents urged the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors to press Yosemite National Park to restore a prior 20‑year memorandum of understanding guaranteeing water and wastewater service; county staff recommended pursuing a cooperative planning study and grant funding instead of immediate adversarial action.
The Wawona Town Planning Advisory Committee asked the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors on May 6 to seek negotiations with the National Park Service to restore the original 20‑year memorandum of understanding (MOU) that had long governed the park service’s delivery of water and wastewater services to the Wawona community.
Ed Mee, chairman of the Wawona Town Planning Advisory Committee, told the board the community relied on the park service’s earlier commitments and said a change to short renewal terms or caveats jeopardizes plans and privately held investments. “The MOU to us was very important,” Mee said; he and other speakers said the park’s more recent draft language would add caveats limiting service when river flows are low and would require new connections to drill private wells.
County staff, park representatives and local stakeholders have been discussing the issue since the Coulterville town plan and Wawona MOU began to be revisited. The…
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