by Spreck | Dec 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
Most of California’s largest urban water systems have invested in groundwater recharge programs in rural regions. Restore Hetch Hetchy’s Yosemite’s Opportunity provides a list of some of these programs totaling up to 1,875,000 acre-feet of water storage – or more than 5 times the size of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir’s 360,000 acre-feet. Many of these cooperative programs involve agricultural lands near the California Aqueduct in Kern County where it is convenient for water agencies to exchange supplies.
The California Department of Water Resources is conducting studies in each of the principal San Joaquin Valley watersheds to show how cooperative management can improve water supplies and groundwater levels while reducing flood. Restore Hetch Hetchy has been critical of San Francisco for declining to participate. Might the SFPUC change its mind?
Restore Hetch Hetchy has been sharply critical of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission for not pursuing similar programs in Stanislaus County, where the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation Districts share the Tuolumne River and Don Pedro Reservoir and where there are ample opportunities to recharge groundwater that could provide widespread benefits. (We do give San Francisco credit for its groundwater banking program in San Mateo County – see below)
Our goal, of course, is to encourage San Francisco to improve its system so that Hetch Hetchy Valley can be restored! Others would like San Francisco to be less stingy with releases to sustain salmon populations in the lower Tuolumne River and downstream through the Delta and into the ocean. Businesses and residents in San Francisco and neighboring counties might prefer simply to have an increased buffer against drought. While these policy objectives differ, no reasonably informed person can deny that recharging groundwater in wet years has the potential to add cost-effective water supply.
Restore Hetch Hetchy has been particularly critical of the SFPUC for declining to even take part in the “Managed Aquifer Recharge” (aka Flood-MAR) studies being conducted by the California Department of Water Resources. We have made this point directly to the SFPUC and included it in our Fall Newsletter.
So we were pleased that the SFPUC did include DWR’s Flood-MAR studies in a meeting with the Bay Area Water Stewards last week. DWR staff presented their methodology and results of their initial study of the Merced River watershed. DWR will be extending its work to other Sierra watersheds, and we are hopeful it will produce useful results suggesting how flood waters from all rivers, including the Tuolumne, could be better managed.
The Flood-MAR studies are just studies (and be forewarned they are not designed for the casual reader) . They provide information and do not require any action. But that information can demonstrate how water agencies can better work together to manage water more effectively. So kudos to DWR for undertaking this effort. We hope San Francisco will join other water agencies throughout the state and learn what benefits might be achieved through restoration.
The SFPUC does deserve credit for working with cities in San Mateo County to recharge about 60,000 acre-feet of groundwater capacity. Essentially the cities will use surface water in wet years, allowing the aquifer to recharge (“in-lieu”). If and when a drought occurs, the SFPUC can extract these stored supplies for all customers.
by Spreck | Nov 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Tom Philp with the board and staff of Restore Hetch Hetchy
As Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Philp proclaimed at our Annual Dinner last month, “The highest and best use of Hetch Hetchy Valley is still restoration.”
Please consider a contribution so Restore Hetch Hetchy can continue our work – in Yosemite, in San Francisco, in Sacramento and in Washington D.C. – to make restoration a reality.
Restoring Hetch Hetchy to its natural splendor will create new homes for wildlife, provide park visitors an alternative to often overcrowded parts of Yosemite, and inspire a new generation to revere, protect and restore our most precious natural landscapes.
Thank you for supporting Restore Hetch Hetchy and Happy Holidays!
by Spreck | Nov 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
Our Fall 2024 Newsletter is out. If you’d like a printed copy but haven’t received one, send your name and address to admin@hetchhetchy.org.
We are pleased to share Daved English’s 1987 painting of Kolana Rock in a restored valley. Click the image for the full size – it is a big file.
We respect the mission and work of agencies which serve water. Much of what the SFPUC does, however, is unacceptable. Restore Hetch Hetchy is dedicated to undoing their principal transgression of damming an iconic landscape in Yosemite National Park. In addition, the SFPUC has overhyped the taste of its water, sued the EPA for enforcing the Clean Water Act, refused to participate in Statewide groundwater recharge studies, and denied recreational access to most of its reservoirs. It truly is an institution in need of reform.
We are making progress encouraging the National Park Service to improve access to Hetch Hetchy. But we are also frustrated. In response to our advocacy, the NPS changed its rational but still prohibits boating and fishing at Hetch Hetchy (the largest reservoir in California where these activities are not allowed). We will not give up and are considering all our options.
Our Annual Dinner at the Lafayette Veterans Center was a ton of fun. Great to bring Tom Philp back into the fold. Salvador Lopez wowed the crowd when he described the love and labor that went into his gorgeous Hetch Hetchy painting. And it was very nice that every member of the board was able to attend – see photo below.
The Restore Hetch Hetchy Board – a dedicated, passionate and enthusiastic team – with staff and Tom Philp. Click image for full size.
by Spreck | Nov 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
The San Francisco Chronicle’s headline reads: “San Francisco’s famous water was put to a taste test. The results are surprising.” The full article is available online and well worth reading.
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we were not so surprised with the results.
We’ve long thought that the adulation over the supposed superior quality of San Francisco’s water is unwarranted. So, over the past few months, Restore Hetch Hetchy initiated and conducted a series of “taste tests” to see what people think.
Participants were asked to compare San Francisco’s “Hetch Hetchy” water with supplies delivered by the East Bay Municipal Utilities District and the Marin Municipal Water District, and to rank them according to their preference. Ties were allowed.
Let’s cut to the chase. Out of 114 first place votes, only 28 people (25%) chose San Francisco’s water.
All testing used a “double-blind” protocol – i.e. neither the person tasting the water nor the person administering the test knew which sources corresponded with the samples. Further, all taps were flushed before filling glass bottles, and all samples were kept at room temperature.
The tests took place in 3 stages:
- In June, samples were collected at the SFPUC and EBMUD headquarters and from a Mexican restaurant in Larkspur (grouchy staff at the Marin Municipal Water District declined to provide samples for the test!). Graduate students from the University of Colorado, who designed the test as part of a “Capstone” project, collected the opinions of passersby at the Rockridge BART station in Oakland. The Capstone Team’s reports – both their Findings as well as their Methodology and Recommendations – are posted.
- In July, samples were collected from private homes in San Mateo County (90% SFPUC water), Oakland (EBMUD) and Fairfax (Marin). The samples were offered to passersby at Safeway and in homes. The samples were also sent to a lab for analysis – see results for SFPUC, EBMUD and Marin.
- In October, samples were collected from the same private homes in San Mateo County, Oakland and Fairfax. The water was offered to people attending Restore Hetch Hetchy’s Annual dinner on October 26 – as soon as they arrived and before they consumed any other food or beverage.
A breakdown of the results is provided below reflecting the variability of responses. Also, as the Chronicle article notes, the exact mix of sources in any utility’s supply varies over time and location (for example, San Francisco has recently taken Hetch Hetchy Reservoir offline in winter months so they can do maintenance on the Mountain Tunnel – something customers rarely notice).
Some water experts have indicated they prefer San Francisco’s water for its “pure” taste. Others have said that San Francisco’s water has too little taste and that they prefer water with a modest mineral content (mostly calcium and magnesium). Too much mineral content, as is the case with much of southern California’s water, is generally disfavored. Figure 2, below, compares the mineral content of the samples used in the taste tests with values reported in water supplies for San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento.
When Hetch Hetchy Valley is restored, San Francisco will still rely principally on the Tuolumne River for the majority of its supply. Water will be stored in and diverted from Cherry, Eleanor and Don Pedro Reservoirs – with mineral content perhaps similar to East Bay MUD’s Pardee Reservoir. Maybe customers will like their water even better!
Restore Hetch Hetchy is pretty well convinced that the hype over “Hetch Hetchy” water is overstated. If the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is not convinced, we would welcome the opportunity to cosponsor an independent test.
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Finally, a reminder that the Capstone Team will be presenting their Water Taste Test and other findings via Zoom Monday November 4 at 6 PM (Pacific Time). Register here if you would like to join the discussion.
by Spreck | Oct 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
Pulitzer prize winning journalist Tom Philp keynoted Restore Hetch Hetchy’s Annual Dinner Saturday night at the Lafayette Veterans Memorial Center. In a wide-ranging and compelling speech, Philp reiterated his support for restoration of Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley before reflecting on many of California’s myriad water issues from the perspective of a journalist as well as that of an erstwhile water agency employee.
Philp concluded his talk with a powerful (and well warranted) condemnation of San Francisco’s outdated sewage system and its shameless lawsuit now challenging the Clean Water Act before the Supreme Court. (The City’s lawsuit is opposed by 8 out of 10 Supervisors and 13 States in an Amicus Curiae brief.)
We will have more to report on from the dinner, but below is the full text of The SacBee editorial:
Tom Philp
The Golden Gate Bridge and the bay of San Francisco, seen from Lands End. The city’s discharge of untreated sewage during large storms is now a subject of a U.S. Supreme Court debate. Getty Images
San Francisco has long used the Pacific Ocean as its toilet. In heavy rains, the city on the hill cannot store all the storm runoff and sewage that flows toward an oceanside treatment plant in a single old pipe, so some heads out to sea. Now, in a case with national implications, San Francisco is hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will allow it to pollute the ocean on occasion without violating the federal Clean Water Act.
Although San Francisco has lived under this regulatory construct for decades, it has now decided to test the limits of federal regulations with a right-leaning high court known for restricting environmental laws.
It is beyond ironic that San Francisco is normally the favorite punching bag of America’s right, with Florida’s Ron DeSantis once showing a map of homeless defecation sites in the city while debating California’s Gavin Newsom. Yet now, San Francisco is trying to take advantage of this infamously right-tilted court.
While the city denies its legal challenge has anything to do with how Donald Trump fundamentally shifted this court during his presidency, the timing speaks for itself. San Francisco is a regressive city when it comes to all things water.
It is California’s Trumpsville.
No less than 12 other states are fighting San Francisco in court. So is California Attorney General Rob Bonta. So is the Biden administration, which has taken San Francisco to court alleging years of failure to upgrade a wastewater system dating back to the 19th century.
But San Francisco doesn’t seem to care. All it wants is five black-robed justices back in Washington, D.C. to eliminate some regulations. And given the court’s oral arguments earlier this month, San Francisco may be on its way to weakening environmental protections for the rest of the nation.
“We know that San Francisco’s system is resulting in 196 million gallons of sewage poured onto San Francisco’s beaches,” argued Frederick Liu, an attorney for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. “We know that it’s leading to sewer backups into homes and businesses. We know that their infrastructure is aging and failing. We know that the discharges are leading to excessive concentrations.”
IS SAN FRANCISCO REALLY THE VICTIM?
Yet San Francisco considers itself the victim. “San Francisco is therefore exposed to crushing criminal and civil penalties even when it otherwise complies with its 300-page permit,” argued city attorney Tara Steeley. “It doesn’t tell permit holders in advance what we must do to control our discharges.”
San Francisco water management reeks of arrogance.
The system starts by storing water in Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy valley, a glacially-carved wonder that is now under water. The pristine snowmelt then flows to the city. There, after San Franciscans flush their toilets, precious little of the water is reused via recycling, a huge missed opportunity. Rather, the treated wastewater ends up either in San Francisco Bay or the Pacific when it isn’t raining. When it pours, the system can discharge untreated sewage.
Sacramento is the other major California city with a similar “combined” system, with one pipe for both stormwater and sewage in the inner city. But Sacramento is not in court over its permit. It treats “virtually” all its sewage prior to discharge in the Sacramento River.
It is San Francisco’s oceanside plant, the one that simply can’t adequately treat the waste of a quarter million San Franciscans when it rains, that is the subject of the litigation. The plant discharges at seven locations near shore and one 3.3 miles into the ocean.
San Francisco embraces that the Clean Water Act has allowed regulators to prescribe numeric limitations to discharges and their constituents. But it objects to broad prohibitions to pollute, contaminate or create a nuisance, known in the case as “generic prohibitions.”
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to be outraged at the thought.
Speaking to Steeley, Kavanaugh said, “You’re on the hook for millions of dollars and potential prison time even though you didn’t know what your obligations were ahead of time,” a problem “that’s rooted in the statute.”
No attorneys could cite an instance when a wayward wastewater operator ever faced the prospect of incarceration. Rather, Liu told the court that state and federal regulators had to resort to some broad permit conditions because San Francisco made it impossible to do otherwise.
“We were unable to include limitations of that tailoring in this permit because San Francisco deprived us of the very information we would need to do that,” Liu said.
STONEWALLING LEADS TO A LAWSUIT
Fed up with the stonewalling, state and federal agencies have sued San Francisco in hopes of forcing the city to modernize its wastewater system.
“The city since the mid ‘90’s has done virtually nothing to invest in improving its combined sewer system,” said Eric Buescher, an attorney for the environmental group San Francisco Baykeeper.
The lawsuit, now in its early stages, seeks to prohibit any further clean water violations as well as civil penalties. Steeley told the high court the penalties could be as high as $10 billion. Liu said they hadn’t been calculated. He is basically right, the reality is that the case is far from a verdict.
Liu seemed to stop the right-leaning judges in their tracks when he sketched the real-world impact of their gutting the Clean Water Act as San Francisco wants.
The EPA in 14 days has long approved permits for countless farmers and construction projects as long as they broadly promise to follow environmental law. If the courts force regulators to prescribe specific numeric discharge limitations for these routine permits, what now takes days could take months. And that would “undermine…the economy of small business owners,” Liu said.
Justice Samuel Alito seemed to wonder out loud whether federal regulators should continue to issue broad restrictions in these permits and when applicants with complex systems like San Francisco have “refused to provide the information.”
If the court reaches such a compromise, San Francisco’s own recalcitrance, to provide the information that the federal government says it does not have, would be its undoing.
San Francisco water management remains stuck in the 19th century by defending a wastewater system of that era. It could move into the 20th century by embracing as implemented the environmental laws of that era. And it could leap into the modern world by joining its urban water peers, particularly those in Southern California, by recycling that water from the Sierra over and over again. Diversifying its Sierra-centric water portfolio would reduce San Francisco’s dependence on Yosemite. Such a prospect is one that the city’s antiquated water orthodoxy has never managed to fathom.
The Pacific shouldn’t be San Francisco’s potty to foul as much as it can get away with.
California’s most infamous Trumpian city will remain so until it cleans up its water act in so many ways.
by Spreck | Oct 22, 2024 | Uncategorized
When it rains hard in San Francisco, raw sewage flows into the Bay. The Environmental Protection Agency has asked the City to fix the problem. San Francisco responded by suing.
Last week, San Francisco’s lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency and its implementation of the Clean Water Act reached the Supreme Court.
As CNN notes, some City leaders, including 8 of 10 Supervisors, are unhappy to be part of a challenge to a landmark environmental law. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the Mayor are both strong supporters of the lawsuit.
At issue is San Francisco’s combined wastewater-storm water system.
In most cities, including almost all on the west coast of the U.S. the systems are separate. When you flush a toilet or take a shower, the effluent goes into a wastewater system to a treatment plant where it is (largely) purified before it is returned to the environment. Rainwater is moved through a separate set of pipes.
In San Francisco, however, wastewater effluent (i.e. sewage) and storm water go into one system. This works fine most of the time. But in big storms, the load is too great for the treatment plants and raw untreated sewage flows into San Francisco Bay, into the ocean and onto beaches – harming fish, marine mammals and human health. See Figure 1.
For more information on combined sewer overflows, see EPA website.
What’s not clear are what San Francisco’s options are if they must comply. The City notes the hardship of building an entirely new system would be onerous, but it should also be able to enlarge the existing combined system to better handle future storms. Other cities with combined systems are watching closely and have weighed in on San Francisco’s side.
Another unknown is how far the Supreme Court will take its repeal of the Chevron standard. For 40 years, “Chevron deference” allowed government agencies wide discretion, often in how to implement environmental statues. It has only been 4 months, so it is too early to fully determine the effect of the loss of the Chevron standard.
The outcome of City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency is being closely watched and is expected to set a precedent for EPA’s ability to enforce the Clean Water Act throughout the country.
