The House Natural Resource Committee will hold a hearingnext Wednesday September 16 (7 AM Pacific Time!) on a number of bills, including Rep. McClintock’s “Yosemite National Park Equal Access and Fairness Act”.
This bill was introduced more than 18 months ago. At the time, we wrote to Rep McClintock, encouraging him the pursue improved access and recreation and provided a plethora of documents in support. See https://hetchhetchy.org/access/.
We are a little surprised that the bill has suddenly reemerged. The text of his bill at this time remains incomplete. The devil is in the details as they say – we look forward to learning more.
Issue #15 of Trails Magazine includes “Yosemite Valley’s Secret Twin”, a wonderful eight page article about Hetch Hetchy covering our efforts both to restore the valley and to improve access and recreation.
Trails Magazine is old school. Their articles are not posted online. But describing Trails as a “magazine” does not do it justice. Every issue is more like a book for your coffee table, beautifully presented with in-depth articles and exquisite imagery to savor and to impress readers. It’s a truly impressive publication and we are thrilled to be included in this most recent issue.
Author Nora Neus, an extraordinary Emmy-nominated producer, writer, and freelance journalist, did extensive research for Yosemite Valley’s Secret Twin over several months.
The article includes interviews with former Yosemite Superintendent Dave Mihalic, Restore Hetch Hetchy Executive Director Spreck Rosekrans and Board Members Lucho Rivera and Mecia Serafino, as well as worthy adversary Adrian Covert of the Bay Area Council.
To read the full article, you’ll need a subscription. Below are a few highlights.
Restoration
Discussing water supply, Neus gives a nod to our Cherry Solution report, echoing our finding that connecting the nearby Cherry Creek Reservoir to San Francisco’s conveyance system would more than serve the region’s growing population. She also notes the results of last spring’s independent statewide poll: Public opinion is on their side. A poll conducted by Probolsky Research in May found that 61% of California voters support restoring Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley, with the important caveat, “if there’s no impact to San Francisco’s water supply.”
We have had extensive discussion of the Cherry Solution with many Congressional offices, albeit none with San Francisco. We stand by the report’s findings and welcome independent review of it and other proposed water and power system improvements.
Neus takes obvious pleasure in quoting Executive Director Spreck Rosekrans, a former high school teacher, “I used to teach calculus to high school students and now I teach arithmetic to politicians.“
Recreation
The article begins by imagining how Rosekrans would like to explore Rancheria Falls by first kayaking across the reservoir. Golden light would slant off the majestic Hetch Hetchy Dome as mist rises off the water. He’d dip his paddle into the still, cool water and pull himself to the far side, where he’d hike about an hour up to Rancheria Falls. The waterfall is otherwise only accessible via an arduous 14-mile hike that he just doesn’t have in him anymore.
Neus explains the restrictions that are all too familiar to many of us: That means no kayaking, no rafting, no swimming, no wading or even touching the water, and certainly no power boating. In California, 37 of the 38 reservoirs over 200,000 acre feet in volume allow recreation. Hetch Hetchy is the only exception. She does note that there is hope for continued improvements: Just this spring, park Superintendent Ray McPadden changed the rules to allow fishing in the reservoir, a major step toward allowing other types of recreation in the area. But after 118 years, will the no-recreation rule change? And if so, could the change pave the way to remove the dam entirely?
Kayaking is permitted at Tenaya Lake in Yosemite, so why not at Hetch Hetchy? (The Raker Act expressly precludes special consideration for any boating restriction at Hetch Hetchy.)
Politics
Neus interviews former Yosemite National Park Superintendent David Mihalic, who has long been disappointed that there are not more voices calling for restoration – he’s still frustrated by the modern environ-mentalist movement’s avoidance of this issue, in part in deference to local Bay Area politicians who are otherwise supporters of environmental causes.
Dave is not wrong, but we have had success getting support from many groups in recent months – stay tuned.“It’s a perversion of the whole national park idea,” he said of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. “I’ve understood why the so-called environmental groups … they just kind of glance over it and start whistling and turn away if the word Hetch Hetchy comes up.”
The article also includes a response from Adrian Covert, who manages water policy for the Bay Area Council. Spending that kind of money dismantling and replacing a perfectly well-operating water system at a time when affordability on utilities is taking people to the breaking point is just not a wise use of public money.
Amusingly, Neus describes the Bay Area Council as a “non-profit”. Perhaps it is in a narrow legal sense. But the Bay Area Council’s clientele incudes Google, Meta, Apple, and Bank of America – some of the largest for-profit companies in the world, any of which could fund restoration by searching under the sofa cushions for loose change.
By the way, we will be debating Adrian soon – October 13 at Manny’s in San Francisco. If you are in the area, please come join us.
And a big thank you to Trails Magazine and Nora Neus for excellent coverage of Hetch Hetchy – Yosemite Valley’s Secret Twin!
Perhaps Assembly Member Greg Wallis would like to be a champion for all of Yosemite.
61 California legislators, led by Greg Wallis (Riverside) have sent a letter to Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum opposing the proposed Yosemite land swap.
The letter notes the swap would be a favor to a private developer and that “Yosemite belongs to no one and to everyone.” Restore Hetch Hetchy agrees. We aren’t opposed to any and all land swaps, but this one does not appear to be in the public interest.
Further, the letter addresses Yosemite’s unique role in American and world history:
That principle is as old as Yosemite’s federal protection. In 1864, in the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act, setting aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias for public use and protection. It marked the first time the federal government set aside scenic land specifically for preservation and public use, and it laid the groundwork for the national park system that followed. What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later.
Hetch Hetchy from Sunrise Point – Photo Isaiah West Taber (enhanced)
One wonders how these legislators feel about the affront to Yosemite that took place in 1913, when Congress passed and President Wilson signed the Raker Act, allowing Hetch Hetchy Valley to be dammed and flooded. Are they and their colleagues in Congress aware that water system improvements are available that could obviate the need for Hetch Hetchy Reservoir? What state and national officials are willing to stand up and undo the historic injustice to Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite?
Restore Hetch Hetchy continues to talk to elected officials. Many seem to get it, but so far the silence is deafening.
Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow. – David Brower
Hetch Hetchy and Glen Canyon are often cited as the most controversial dams in the United States. In both cases, wild landscapes were sacrificed for water and power needs, and two of the American West’s most stunning river canyons were buried under reservoirs.
Restore Hetch Hetchy is dedicated to returning to the people Yosemite Valley’s lost twin, Hetch Hetchy – a majestic glacier-carved valley with towering cliffs and waterfalls, an untamed place where river and wildlife run free, a new kind of national park. The Glen Canyon Institute is dedicated to the restoration of Glen Canyon and a free flowing Colorado River through Grand Canyon.
Dams at Hetch Hetchy and Glen Canyon were built, naturally, at narrow spots in their respective river canyons. Hetch Hetchy Reservoir (360,000 acre-feet) is tiny compared to Glen Canyon, only 1/67th as large.
San Francisco lobbied for more than a decade to build a dam at Hetch Hetchy, and was initially repulsed by the U.S. government with the support of John Muir and his nascent Sierra Club. In 1913, however, Congress passed and President Wilson signed the Raker Act in 2013, allowing the City to build O’Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley. The controversy turned the Sierra Club from an outing club to a political organization, as explained by author Robert Righter in “The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism.”
Glen Canyon Dam was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s after the United State Government struck a compromise with the Sierra Club, led by David Brower. The Sierra Club had opposed the Bureau of Reclamation’s plan to build a dam upstream on the Green River that would have flooded Echo Park and acquiesced to building Glen Canyon Dam instead. Brower soon regretted the compromise, co-authoring a book (with Eliot Porter) called The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado.
Steamboat Rock at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers (tributary to the Colorado) in Echo Park within Dinosaur National Monument.
Restore Hetch Hetchy and the Glen Canyon Institute are further connected. Prior to a Congressional hearing in the mid 1990s , David Brower had worked with current RHH Executive Director Spreck Rosekrans on testimony regarding the limited utility of Glen Canyon Dam for water storage. Brower later recommended Rosekrans to Ron Good who was assembling the team that ultimately became Restore Hetch Hetchy.
Impending reductions in water supplies from the Colorado River have been prevalent in the news in 2026. The situation, however, has been steadily worsening since the 1980s – the last and only time that the river’s two huge reservoirs, Lake Mead (27,000,000 acre-feet behind Hoover Dam) and Lake Powell (24,000,000 acre-feet behind Glen Canyon Dam) were full. Increasing demand for water coupled with deceased runoff have seriously depleted both reservoirs, threatening their ability to deliver water and generate hydropower.
Allocations of Colorado River water are based on the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which relied on records from a particularly wet period to divide the river equally between the upper basin states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico) and lower basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) – with subsequent adjustments for Mexico. Storage has been depleted even without the upper basin states taking their full share; the Trump Administration has decreed the lower basin states must bear the burden of sharp reductions.
We don’t know whether the Administration’s edicts will simply be adopted or whether lawsuits and negotiations will follow. Urban southern California has been investing heavily in water recycling (see Yosemite’s Opportunity, page 5). Arizona may have the toughest time adjusting.
As the graphic shows, the bulk of the Colorado’s flow goes not to cities but to agriculture. Of course, food that is grown on farms goes to cities for people to eat. There is no getting around the requirement to use water to grow food.
But one crop stands out – alfalfa. Alfalfa feeds cattle and thus supports the dairy and beef industries. Arizona and California, with long growing seasons, have the highest yields on a per acre basis – twice that of Midwest states. But Midwest states don’t need to irrigate their alfalfa. Should “we” move alfalfa eats?
It’s tempting to say, let the market work this out – and the market will indeed do so to some degree. But water rights are based on history and politics, and have very little to do with the market. So the solution on the Colorado, whatever it is, will be a combination of law, politics and market economics.
While Lake Powell is at record low levels, it is not empty so Glen Canyon is not yet restored. There are credible arguments that total losses would be reduced if all storage was moved downstream to Lake Mead (while the rate of evaporation at the hotter downstream location is higher, bank seepage in the porous sandstone of Glen Canyon would be largely eliminated). The principal challenge to this approach might be massive institutional hubris as the federal Bureau of Reclamation would not want to concede that Glen Canyon Dam was never a particularly good idea.
Hubris also appears to be a barrier with officials in San Francisco. They are collectively reluctant to concede in any public way that San Francisco is the only city to build a dam in national park and that it could be restored with relatively simple water system improvements that have been commonplace throughout California. It’s time for city institutions to confront the damage it has caused by building America’s Most Controversial Dam and look to solutions that will make Yosemite National Park whole once again.
San Francisco’s Calaveras Reservoir is one of only two reservoirs in California holding over 75,000 acre-feet of water that does not allow fishing (now that fishing is allowed in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir!) – and only one of three such reservoirs that does not allow boating. We have been tracking Tim Dummer’s impressive efforts over the last several years to gain fishing access to Calaveras Reservoir.
Dummer has had success in the courts, but now they are giving him the runaround. His attorney, Greg Glaser, has filed an appeal. Without getting into the weeds of the case, we were happy to file an amici brief, along with Northern California Council Fly Fishers International (thanks to RHH Board Secretary and attorney Mark Palley for the legal work). UC Davis law professor Karrigan Bork is among others who have also submitted an amicus brief.
Fishing at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, new this year, is expected to be popular. Fishing the Tuolumne River after the valley is restored will be phenomenal.
Calaveras Reservoir (Alameda County) is San Francisco’s largest reservoir in the Bay Area. The City restricts access to its reservoirs and on its watershed lands more so than other water agencies.
Crowds in Yosemite
The Los Angeles Times’ Jaclyn Cosgrove recent column on crowding in Yosemite tells some excoriating tales and compares Yosemite to Disneyland. There is some truth to this assertion, especially in summer months.
Cosgrove briefly discusses the legacy of Hetch Hetchy and laments that it is no longer “a place to find a little quiet.” That statement is true principally on spring weekends when Hetch Hetchy’s lone principal trail draws hikers on a pilgrimage to the spectacular Wapama Falls.
Except for those few days, Hetch Hetchy is still underused. Restore Hetch Hetchy is encouraging the National Park Service to allow camping at Hetch Hetchy after San Francisco fulfills its legal commitment to provide potable water to the (currently restricted) campground.
When Hetch Hetchy is restored, we will have a blank slate for managing the valley in a way that accommodates visitors without substantial traffic and congestion. There will surely be differences of opinion, but we are confident restoration will be magnificent and will provide an inspiring alternative to Yosemite Valley.
Hetch Hetchy Debate
We are looking forward to a debate on the future of Hetch Hetchy on October 20, at Manny’s in the Mission District. If you are nearby, please join us.
Our opponent with be Adrian Covert of the Bay Area Council, our worthy (and sometimes hyperbolic opposition). The Bay Area council represents some of the world’s largest businesses, including Apple, Google, Facebook, and Bank of America. Rather than oppose restoration, these companies could and should pay for much of the cost of restoration simply by rummaging under the couch cushions for spare change.
Thanks in advance to Manny’s for hosting and to Laura McFarland of Coro California for moderating the discussion. For tickets go to Eventbrite.
