The House of Representatives passed, by a single vote, President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” on Thursday. It heads to the Senate where some say there will be a “Big, Beautiful Rewrite”.
The bill has enormous implications. Commentary herein will stick to Restore Hetch Hetchy’s extended wheelhouse – land and water in the west.
Bipartisan opposition, led by Congressmembers Zinke (MT) and Vasquez (NM), forced a proposal to sell 450,000 acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah to be eliminated from the bill.
The “Big, Beautiful Bill” also includes $2,000,000,000 to enlarge Shasta Dam & Reservoir and $500,000,000 to help fund tunnels to move water from north to south around the Delta in California. These projects are deeply controversial for both environmental and economic reasons.
Enlarging Shasta Dam has been controversial for some. Doing so would flood lands belonging to the Winnemem Wintu tribe as well as a stretch of the McCloud River that is well known for trout fishing and is protected by the California Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
The Delta Tunnels project is the latest incarnation of the longstanding proposal to convey water around California’s Delta as it travels from the wetter north to farmlands and cities in the south. Proponents allege that the Delta is vulnerable to sea level rise and catastrophic failure. Governor Newsom agrees and is trying to fast track permitting. Opponents refute the claims of imminent failure and assert dewatering the Delta will destroy the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas.
A 1982 Los Angeles Times editorial cartoon mocks San Francisco’s opposition to the peripheral canal. (Restore Hetch Hetchy has no problem with San Francisco’s pipeline – only that it uses Yosemite as a storage tank.)
Beyond the dispute pitting environmental impacts versus water supply benefits inherent in these two projects, there is a fundamental economic principle at stake – “user pays”.
Of course Central Valley Project farmers, the principal beneficiaries of enlarging Shasta, would like more water – especially if they don’t have to pay for it. Farms in California’s San Joaquin Valley are some of the most productive in the world but subsidizing infrastructure to store and deliver water skews decision-making away from protecting fisheries and other environmental resources. (The original construction of the Central Valley Project, including Shasta, Trinity, Folsom and New Melones Reservoirs as well as the Delta Mendota Canal, was done with zero interest loans that have yet to be repaid.)
Paying for the Delta Tunnels is likely to be a different story. $500,000,000 is only 2.5% of the total estimated cost of $20,000,000,000. Most of that cost would be borne by people living in southern California. Could/should they invest in other projects instead, even if they believe catastrophic Delta failure may well occur.
San Francisco did not receive any substantial federal or state funds for construction of Hetch Hetchy, Cherry & Eleanor Reservoirs or for its pipelines and tunnels conveying water to the Bay Area. It did, however, receive an agreement to “rent” Hetch Hetchy Valley for only $30,000 per year. That subsidy has worked out pretty well for the City. We don’t like to put a price tag on Yosemite, but if San Francisco had had to pay anything close to market price, it would likely have decided to elsewhere for water or perhaps to have built all of its dams in the Tuolumne watershed outside of Yosemite National Park.