Restore Hetch Hetchy’s 2021 Fall Newsletter is available online. If you’d like a hard copy, email admin@hetchhetchy.org and provide your name and address.
Included the Newsletter:
As expected, supporters want to visit a restored Hetch Hetchy Valley without the traffic and congestion that too often besets Yosemite Valley – most people prefer eliminating private automobiles. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the survey.
An impressive partnership between Yosemite’s Seven Traditionally Associated Tribes and
the National Park Service to restore black oaks in Yosemite Valley.
San Diego’s PureWater Program – such a program in San Francisco would fully replace Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.
Our shopping bag makes a great holiday gift. Email admin@hetchhetchy.org if you’d like to purchase one or more.
We’ve added both board and staff as we’ve begun to implement our strategic plan – adopted in September. Welcome Lucho, Mecia and Mike.
New Faces at Restore Hetch Hetchy (l to r), Board Member Lucho Rivera, Board Member Mecia Serafino, and Community Outreach Liaison Mike Gaffney.
Please consider a contribution to Restore Hetch Hetchy.
A longtime supporter of Restore Hetch Hetchy has generously offered to match contributions, up to $25,000, made during the week of Giving Tuesday. Contribute online or send a check, dated December 4 or before, to Restore Hetch Hetchy, 3286 Adeline St. Suite 7, Berkeley, California 94703.
At a time when our national parks are more popular than ever, Hetch Hetchy can be a new model. We can create a place where natural and cultural resources are truly honored, but without the congestion that too often diminishes the visitor experience.
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we have been especially busy the last few months. We’ve adopted and begun to implement a strategic plan, invested in additional outreach to communities in and around Yosemite National Park, and are working closely with the National Park Service to improve access and recreation even with the dam in place. Finding Hetch Hetchy, our new rock climbing film, is due out very soon, and will help us tell our story to new audiences – climbers as well as all park lovers.
Opportunities for San Francisco to improve its water system, so it can sustain or improve water supply for its customers without Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, continue to expand. As legally mandated Groundwater Sustainability Plans are put into place, communities, including those along the lower Tuolumne River, will have additional incentive to recharge aquifers. Also, San Diego has embraced new recycling technology that will not only provide half of its water supply but will improve the quality of its beaches – technology that would not only allow Hetch Hetchy Valley to be restored but would improve water quality in San Francisco Bay.
Timmy O’Neill ascends Hetch Hetchy Dome, while Lucho Rivera watches from the portaledge below. Lucho and Timmy, like so many climbers, are passionate about Yosemite and great ambassadors for Hetch Hetchy’s restoration. (Photo: James Q Martin)
As we encourage economic growth in California, we should also make a commitment to cherish and sustain our natural heritage. I can think of no better way than restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley for our children and grandchildren.
Congratulations to Luke Morris of Hendersonville, North Carolina, for taking third place in the 2021 Next Generation Angels Awards Middle School Division. Have a look, we think Luke did a great job. The Henderson Lightning agrees.
The Better Angels Society, run by filmmaker Ken Burns, is dedicated to educating Americans about their history through documentary film. The competition that honored Luke’s documentary drew competitors from all 50 states, as well as China, South Korea, American Samoa, Guam and Singapore.
Hetch Hetchy’s compelling history, and the lesson it has taught us, continues to draw the interest of young people. Students from grade schools and grad schools, and all levels in between, are interested in environmental history and often come to Restore Hetch Hetchy for materials and/or interviews.
Luke Morris, however, did not come to us. His love of hiking in outdoor spaces and parks inspired him to research John Muir. His eighth grade teacher told him about Hetch Hetchy and Luke decided it would be the focus of his film. Luke found some great photographs and did thorough research, creating an excellent film.
Hetch Hetchy continues to loom large in American environmental history. The valley was dammed only after a protracted and bitter battle between San Francisco and “preservationists” (as they were called at the time). Hetch Hetchy Reservoir remains the most harmful development to take place in any one of America’s national parks. Finally, as the film explains, less than three years later, Congress passed the National Park Service Act in large part to ensure that such destruction would never again take place.
As inspiring as the story of Hetch Hetchy has been to date, we think the next chapter – restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural splendor – will motivate people everywhere to be better stewards of both their own communities and the grand landscapes of our natural world.
From left to right, Cherry, Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy – San Francisco’s three “upcountry” reservoirs. The City also stores water in Don Pedro, downstream on the Tuolumne River, and five reservoirs in the Bay Area. Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is a significant, but wholly replaceable, piece of the system.
Sunday’s editorialin the San Francisco Chronicle strongly urged Dennis Herrera, the newly elected General Manager of the City’s Public Utilities Commission, to invest in alternative supplies and lessen the harm to habitats and wildlife caused by its diversions. It’s a positive thing that the Chronicle understands that San Francisco, like all cities and farms, cause harm when water is diverted from the natural world.
For those without a subscription, the editorial includes the following vignettes:
“Conservation won’t be enough. We still need to diversify our water portfolio.”
“There are rivers upon rivers of untapped, drought-resistant fresh water waiting to be captured — our treated sewage outflows.”
“Orange County has the sewage recycling capability to meet the water needs of 1 million residents. There is a not a single environmental sustainability metric in which San Francisco should be trailing Orange County.”
“Herrera has signaled that he’s up to the challenge. San Francisco residents need him to mean it.”
Unfortunately, however, the Chronicle continues its myopia when it comes to Hetch Hetchy. The City’s favorite reservoir is included in the editorial but not associated with the harm the water system has caused. The Chronicle thus continues its long history of supporting aquatic restoration just about everywhere throughout California with the exception of Yosemite – for a few decades of examples of this double standard, see here).
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we understand the inclination of some San Francisco leaders to hold on to the special (and unprecedented) deal it made with Congress in 1913. It’s time for a paradigm shift. As a whole, San Franciscans need to recognize and undo the harm they have done to Yosemite.
Here’s our letter to the Chronicle – we hope they will print it:
Dear Editor:
San Francisco, like most of California’s cities and farms, do indeed cause harm to habitat and wildlife by diverting water from Sierra rivers. The Chronicle is right that the time to diversify the City’s portfolio with sustainable alternatives, such as recycling, in now.
San Francisco, however, stands alone as the only city in the United States to have inflicted such harm in a national park – something it did a century ago when it clear-cut, dammed and flooded Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley. Government agencies, universities and environmental groups have all shown that investments in recycling or groundwater storage would keep water supplies whole while allowing Hetch Hetchy to be returned to a natural and wild state. The time to reclaim all of Yosemite is now as well.
Storm flows that damaged the bridges at Wapama Falls were roughly 5 times as high as the spring snowmelt in May 2021 (shown above).
The seasonally rare “Bomb Cyclone” storm, which drenched northern California during the fourth week of October, hit Hetch Hetchy at 4 AM on October 24 and Yosemite Valley three hours later. Steady rain over thirty hours totaled 5 inches at Hetch Hetchy and 6 inches in Yosemite Valley.
Yosemite’s waterfalls, bone dry at the end of the summer in a drought year, came to life as did creeks and rivers throughout the state. Pictures of Yosemite Falls were gleefully posted all over the World Wide Web.
Photos of Wapama Falls were not available as the storm damaged the bridges at its base and the National Park Service was forced to deny visitor access to protect safety. So presently, as has too often been the case in recent years, hikers are not able to really see Wapama or to hike beyond it.
The Park Service plans to reopen the trail soon. We hope that to be true, as the rain has abated and fall has brought great hiking weather.
The Park Service has also been working on a long-term repair and relocation of the bridges at Wapama. We hope one day soon they can be open every day of the year – or only closed to the public on very rare occasions.
As we explained in Keeping Promises: Providing Public Access to Hetch Hetchy Valley, Yosemite National Park, Restore Hetch Hetchy believes the National Park Service has an obligation to provide the level of visitor access assured by the letter and spirit of the controversial Raker Act in 1913. A better bridge at Wapama is long overdue, since Hetch Hetchy Reservoir has eliminated access across the valley. We also continue to support a quiet, electric, non-polluting tour boat to show visitors the entire Hetch Hetchy canyon and transport them to trailheads along the reservoir’s shore (an idea San Francisco used to entreat Congress to allow construction of the dam and reservoir).
We can only guess what the peak flow of Wapama Falls was during the storm. There is an upstream flow gage, but it does not measure values over 1000 cubic feet per second. As shown in Chart 1, however, the flow gage for Wapama (aka Falls Creek) were similar to those at Happy Isles Bridge on the Merced River at the beginning and end of the storm so the peak flow may have reached a similar value – roughly five times that of the snowmelt flows last May (shown in the photo above).
A smattering of rain and snow in early October gives us hope that 2022 will be a wet year and our two year drought will come to an end. Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t.
2020 was dry. 2021 was one of the very driest years we’ve seen over the last century.
Moreover, groundwater levels have continuously declined, so it is increasingly difficult to rely on our aquifers when precipitation is scarce. Wells have gone dry across the state. Many small Central Valley communities rely solely on groundwater (and the quality can be unfit to drink even when it is available). Cities on the Mendocino Coast have resorted to bringing in water by truck water for the past month, as wells have gone dry.
Conditions in California’s larger urban centers vary. Marin County is considering building a permanent pipeline across the Richmond – San Rafael Bridge (Marin built such a pipeline in 1977 but removed it a few years later). Zone 7, which relies on the State Water Project supplies and limited local groundwater to serve Pleasanton and Livermore, is requiring customers to cut back. And Valley Water, the Bay Area’s largest supplier serving the South Bay, has told its customers that Santa Clara County is “in an extreme and exceptional drought.”
For the most part, urban southern California is faring better. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and its customers have built local surface storage, invested heavily in recycling and has stored groundwater locally, in the Central Valley and in the Mojave Desert. The East Bay Municipal Utility District will be accessing additional supplies from the Sacramento River through its diversion facility at Freeport – a project completed just a decade ago.
San Francisco’s Regional Water System is also in pretty decent shape. The SFPUC reports it has 980,563 acre-feet in its nine reservoirs – roughly enough to supply its customers for four years even if its does not rain a drop. See Figure 1.
Restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park will not mean any reduction in water supply or any loss of reliability. For example, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission could invest in groundwater recharge to replace the storage function of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, as so many of California’s cities have done over the last 30 years (see Figure 2). The battle to convince leaders in San Francisco is partly economic, but mostly political. Not a drop of water need be lost!
Since modest investment in the early 1990’s Kern County’s groundwater banks have provided substantial benefits for farmers and cities alike. Figure 2 shows the aquifers are recharged in years when river runoff is high, and those supplies are then withdrawn in drier years.
