We plan to encourage elected officials to take action over the next several months. As part of our effort to show broad support, we have posted a simple petition on our website. Please take a moment to sign – and ask your friends to do so as well (they can select whether or not they want to be added to our list for updates).
If you need any encouragement, check out (again perhaps) Libby McLaren’s phenomenal and stirring version of Bill Oliver’s “Hooray for Hetch Hetchy.” Libby is a proud graduate of Berkeley’s John Muir Elementary – class of ’67.
One last thing. Great news. The endangered California red-legged frog has made a strong comebackin Yosemite and may soon be introduced in the Hetch Hetchy area.
The California red-legged frog – photo Jamie Bettaso USFWS
Visitors flocked to Hetch Hetchy last weekend as they did to all of Yosemite National Park. Long waits at entrance stations and full parking lots frustrated visitors. Many have called for a return of a reservation system to manage crowds during periods of peak demand.
Parking at Hetch Hetchy was full by 12:30. Fortunately, our entourage met at 10:30 and had a brief discussion at the dam before heading out to Wapama Falls.
We saw more folks on the trail to Wapama than ever. It was warm enough that the icy spray from the falls was most welcome. Some of our group sought more adventure, and went down to Poopenaut Valley or up to the top of the canyon above Tueeulala and Wapama Falls. Photo Alice Chung
Wapama Falls from above. Access requires off trail hiking, making the journey challenging but ever so rewarding.Photo Lucho Rivera
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we don’t anticipate restoration will substantially reduce crowding in Yosemite Valley. It will help some.
Returning Hetch Hetchy to its natural splendor will, however, provide a glorious alternative that will welcome visitors to a valley with less infrastructure and congestion. Reasonable people will debate passionately how best to manage visitor use in a restored valley. We can’t wait for that discussion, but first we have a reservoir to relocate.
It’s a stunning shot, and a view rarely seen. Restore Hetch Hetchy board member Mecia Serafino scrambled 1800 vertical feet to the top of Kolana Rock to get a clear view of the entirety of Wapama Falls. Mecia reports she didn’t mind getting a bit of poison oak while bushwhacking along what might generously be called a trail.
Mecia Serafino
Mecia’s photograph has been entered in Firefall Ranch’s Spring Renewal contest – please vote for it.
Wapama Falls from the top of Kolana Rock – photo by Mecia Serafino.
Few people who have visited Hetch Hetchy have seen the entirety of Wapama Falls. You can only see the lower portion from the O’Shaughnessy Dam. Even when you hike to the falls and cross the stream beneath Wapama (an exhilarating experience), you cannot see the top.
Were the valley undammed, of course, it would be simple to saunter across the meadow to see the full waterfall. Or even, as Congress expected, visitors would take a boat across the reservoir and see the whole thing.
Mecia’s view is special. It is all of Wapama Falls – not from below but from the top of Kolana Rock. Let’s be honest. Few of us are likely to hike to the top of Kolana – poison oak or not. Thanks to Mecia for doing this.
The entirety of Wapama Falls (during peak snowmelt) from the reservoir – a perspective not available to the public.
Kolana Rock, before Hetch Hetchy was dammed, rose 2100 feet above the valley floor.
In The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (2005), Historian Robert Righter recounts the philosophical difference between “Preservationist” John Muir and “Conservationist” Gifford Pinchot, first head of the United States Forest Service who supported damming Hetch Hetchy because it provided “The greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time.”
Righter is correct that Hetch Hetchy ignited the activism we see today, but the term “environmentalism” was not really used in its current context until 1970 or so.
Today, environmentalism means different things to different people and different organizations. At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we’re committed to the idea, passion and value of preserving and restoring Earth’s most spectacular landscapes and we are laser focused on Hetch Hetchy – the one landscape in our great national park system that has been damaged.
Today, many “environmental” organizations have broadened their mission well beyond natural landscapes and some do not address natural landscapes at all.
Authoring “Yosemite’s conservationists: an Earth Day message“, Ken Braun, Managing Editor and Director of Content for the Capitol Research Center, opines that “advocates for both conservation and energy abundance could and should once again become—quite literally— natural allies.” He recounts with disappointment how the Sierra Club has evolved from being the premier protector of public lands to an organization opposed to energy development. He is more positive about The Nature Conservancy and is a big fan of Restore Hetch Hetchy (Yosemite is his “#1 favorite place on the planet and #2 is not close”).
Long before Restore Hetch Hetchy, Executive Director Spreck Rosekrans and his wife Isabella took their kids out of school on a whim and headed off to Yosemite. Ken Braun would understand.
We are sympathetic to Braun’s view. Restore Hetch Hetchy, after all, was founded by Sierra Club members who were highly motivated to find a physical and political solution that would allow Yosemite’s second great valley to be returned to its natural splendor. We take pride in identifying and proposing practical water and power solutions that meet human needs.
We do understand, however, that the Sierra Club and so many others tackle complicated worldwide issues related to energy development and, in many areas, water supply development.
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we mostly stay in our lane. But we are big supporters of solar power with battery backups that have been successfully and cost-effectively developed in California and other areas. And we are big fans of improved groundwater recharge in wet years, recycled water and improved markets (see last week’s blog).
Another Earth Day message comes from Edward Ring, director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, in his Ringside: The Abundance Alliance. Ring does not outwardly support or oppose restoring Hetch Hetchy (or Mono Lake or the Salton Sea), but he implicitly acknowledges them as noble objectives as long as environmentalists “embrace big projects”.
Ring has a point. We all (self-identifying “environmentalists” and those who eschew such a moniker) need to be practical about meeting human needs. But the devil is in the details. Water recycling may share the same core technology as desalination but it has far fewer impacts. Ring’s description of how to add 10 million acre-feet of water supply includes some ideas that should be pursued, some that shouldn’t. Further the proposal conflates storage with supply – building a reservoir does not mean if will fill.
Restore Hetch Hetchy takes pride in being serious about water and power solutions – mostly those related to our narrow (yet oh so grand!) objective, but also for the world at large. We don’t support the same approaches Braun and Ring propose. But we do support robust public debate about all technologies and proposals as well as decisive action to implement projects that serve the needs of our communities without undue financial or ecological cost.
As a result of the highly-publicized, long-term decline in Colorado River supplies, Las Vegas and Arizona are eager to find additional water. Shown above are Lake Mead’s intake towers in 1983 and 2022.
Water markets are often controversial and are institutionally complex. So buying and selling of supplies between water agencies happens less than it should and many areas do not have sufficient incentives to use water efficiently. (More on this philosophy below.)
San Diego’s surplus is the result of three things:
Investment in the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant,
Investment in its Pure Water recycling program, and
Reduced demand.
Recycling and desalination both rely on the same core technology – using energy to squeeze water through high-efficiency membrane filters (aka nanofilters). Desalination, however requires far more energy due to the high salt content of ocean water. In addition, the disposal of excess brine is problematic and nobody wants a desalination plant on their beach.
San Diego’s “Pure Water” recycling project, however, is intriguing from an environmental perspective. Its genesis is not simply from the desire for more water, but also from mandates to reduce pollution from its Point Loma wastewater plant. See our Fall 2021 Newsletter story.
Additionally, urban water demand in San Diego has dropped, as it has throughout the state. People are watering fewer lawns and indoor fixtures are more efficient than ever.
As a result of its overinvestment, San Diego will be selling water to Las Vegas and Arizona, areas that are seeing reduction in their supplies from the Colorado River. This will bring at least some rate relief in San Diego. We can think of it as selling desalinated and recycled water, but the inland customers will actually be using Colorado River water that would otherwise go to San Diego.
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we are pleased these agencies are doing business. As noted above, we are fans of San Diego’s recycling project but we are not fans of desalination (it’s an expensive, harmful technology we don’t need at this time and hopefully never will).
As promised above a bit more on selling water, first published on World Water Day in 2010
Balancing the Water Business and the Public Trust
By Spreck Rosekrans | Published: October 15, 2010
Aristotle was right. Water, along with earth, air and fire, is a one of the primary elements upon which life depends. Water is essential for our homes, our businesses, and especially for our farms. Water also is the great elixir that sustains fish, wildlife and the natural world.
Across the globe, as a result of increases in population, depletion of groundwater basins and the uncertainty of future precipitation, shortages of this precious fluid continue to become more commonplace. Providing reliable water supplies requires both cost-effective investments in infrastructure as well as policies and incentives to ensure that existing supplies are used fairly and efficiently.
There is a fundamental public interest or trust in water which requires that the environment and local communities be provided sufficient supplies and protected from more powerful and often remote economic interests. As water supplies decline, citizens in the 21st century should plan to monitor governmental management of water closely and to ensure that these indispensable public values are protected.
However, the private sector has an important role to play as well. Improvements in efficiency as well as evolving human and environmental needs will inevitably bring about changes in water use patterns. A business model — with appropriate constraints — should be employed that allows and encourages innovation. In many cases, water should be marketed to those who can use it most efficiently and productively. More opportunity for appropriate water marketing will bring out the best ideas that resourceful water users, urban and agricultural alike, can implement.
By improving efficiency in cities and on farms, economic incentives will help maximize food production and meet business needs while optimizing the use of limited water supplies. As a result, it will be easier to meet basic human needs and to reduce the pressure to extract ever increasing amounts of water from our rivers and streams.
Its worth checking in at the end of March – halfway through the 2026 “water year” (water years run from October through September).
The April 1 San Francisco Chronicle reports “State measurements on April 1, the closely watched date when snow levels historically reach their peaks, show that snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, southern Cascades and Klamath Mountains is a meager 18% of average.”
We aren’t sure where the 18% number comes from. The State’s estimates for rivers in the Sierra Nevada, including the Tuolumne, hover around 50% of average. See the California Data Exchange Center’s B-120 WATER SUPPLY FORECAST UPDATE SUMMARY for March 24.
While there is no such thing as an average year weather-wise, 2026 has indeed been odd. We had a large early season storm in November, significant rain in early January and a cold front bringing mostly snow at the end of February – and little else. Then a heat wave struck. San Francisco saw 90 degrees in March for the first time ever and Sierra snow started to melt quickly.
Focusing on the Tuolumne River (where, like much of the State, good record keeping goes back to 1922):
For the entire water year, we are expecting 1,436,000 acre-feet, 78% of average.
For the April-July snowmelt period, we are expecting 640,000 acre-feet, 54% of average.
It’s a dry year, for sure, but not among the driest. We hope for better next year. In addition to water supply concerns, park visitors will need to go earlier to see Yosemite’s waterfalls this year.
San Francisco’s total share of the Tuolumne River, determined by daily flows and shown in red, has well surpassed its annual demand, and will increase as the albeit meager snowpack continues to melt.
The Chronicle also notes the San Francisco Regional Water System has ample supplies: “The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and East Bay Municipal Utility District, also among the big water providers in the Bay Area, operate reservoirs in the Sierra Nevada, which they say have ample water for the near term. Supply challenges for these agencies would arise after multiple dry years.”
This is an understatement. At least in San Francisco’s case, this year’s rain and snow has brought plenty of water – more that 300,000 acre-feet during the first six months of the year (compared to its demand of only 220,000 acre-feet for the entire water year). So the only impact may be that reservoirs will stop filling at the end of May rather than a month or so later).
