As featured in our Spring 2023 Newsletter, a new set of Hetch Hetchy notecards with art by Lesley Goren is available. The art is an expansion on the letterhead she created for us. Click on each of the images below to zoom in on the artwork.
On the front of the notecards is a beautiful image of California wildflowers. Inside each notecard is Lesley’s imagining of wildlife in a restored Hetch Hetchy Valley. A set of notecards includes five different designs.
Please email admin@hetchhetchy.org if you’d like to order a set.
They are available at a donation of $15 per box.
Restore Hetch Hetchy usually appreciates media coverage. Sometimes it is in our favor, as was Tom Philp’s Pulitzer Prizewinning series for the Sacramento Bee. (Philp will be rejoining the Bee after a 17-year hiatus as Executive Strategist for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Welcome back, Tom).
Reporter Claire Hao is more knowledgeable than most when it comes to infrastructure. She talked to us, to advocates for San Francisco and to leading experts on statewide water and environmental issues.
We were pleased to get the lead in the article. We did not get the last word or the opportunity to reply to the others interviewed, including our critics, so we will do so here. Below, the quotes in the article are repeated, more or less verbatim, and each is followed by our comments.
Naturalist John Muir:
Hetch Hetchy is “one of Nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples.”
Restore Hetch Hetchy agrees with John Muir. No surprise here.
Spreck Rosekrans, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy:
“It’s a tough issue for people in San Francisco. Many people are, I would say, religiously attached to Hetch Hetchy (water).”
Some San Franciscans, including many City officials, appear emotionally connected to “Hetch Hetchy water” and are therefore opposed to restoration even if they are kept whole with respect to water and power. This quasi-spiritual connection may be historically traced to the nationwide battle to allow a dam inside Yosemite National Park that was fought in 1913. What other city names its “water” after one of its reservoirs?
Restore Hetch Hetchy understands that it needs to work with San Francisco citizens and city leaders alike to assure them they will not be harmed by restoration – indeed, that they will someday be able to point to a restored valley with a sense of pride.
“It was a mistake and a quirk of history to dam it in the first place.”
San Francisco was twice denied permission to dam Hetch Hetchy. Only after the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire was the City able to generate national sympathy. Even then the Raker Act was passed only after unprecedented nationwide debate. The National Park Service Act was passed less than three years later, in large part to make sure no such destruction would ever again take place in a national park.
Susan Leal, former general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission:
“I know (raising O’Shaughnessy Dam) is a controversial thing to say. You may need to impound more water.”
The former general manager proposes increasing the dam’s size and flooding more of Yosemite National Park. If this idea is pursued, it would provide federal decisionmakers an opportunity to take a hard look at the numbers and all the alternatives – including eliminating the reservoir entirely. At the end of the day, Restore Hetch Hetchy believes the valley restored. So, we encourage Ms. Leal to keep pursuing the idea.
“We convinced people it was such great water, which it is, but at the same time people go, ‘I only want Hetch Hetchy’”. (Referring to blind taste tests at farmer’s markets) “Hetch Hetchy won most of the time; in fact, overwhelmingly, Hetch Hetchy won”.
San Francisco’s water system does have high quality as do many others. Can people really tell the difference between San Francisco’s water and the filtered water delivered by the East Bay Municipal Utilities District?
The Chronicle article was written by a reporter who, earlier this year, wrote an article about the two month outage of San Francisco’s Mountain tunnel for repairs. During this time, no water was diverted from Hetch Hetchy reservoir. All supplies were taken from local Bay Area reservoirs and filtered. Who even noticed? The reporter admitted she hadn’t.
San Francisco’s hype over its water quality is overstated.
San Francisco received no water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for two months at the beginning of 2023 when the Mountain Tunnel (above) was being repaired. Did customers notice a difference in quality?
Steven Ritchie, SFPUC assistant general manager:
“The original builders kept the technical possibility of raising the dam by another 65 feet. Well gosh, that’s never going to happen. But I stopped saying that, not because I think it’s going to happen, but because the future is really uncertain. Could that happen someday? Possibly – 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, that may become a very viable option.”
Again, Restore Hetch Hetchy welcomes proposals to increase the size of the reservoir. We believe it would lead to reevaluation of the system and, ultimately, to returning Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural splendor. So, bring it on. We dare you.
Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow of water policy at the Public Policy Institute of California:
“It’s a marvel of engineering.”
Dr. Mount is presumably referring to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and its system of pipes and tunnels which deliver water to the Bay Area largely by gravity flow while generating hydropower. Perhaps a “marvel” in some ways but not so much in others.
In 1930, 12 workers were killed in a gas explosion drilling the system’s tunnel through the coast range. It would not be until 1934 (21 long years after the Raker Act was passed) that this “marvel” would deliver water to San Francisco. Engineer Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy was nicknamed “More Money O’Shaughnessy” as he went back again and again with hat in hand for additional funds during the Great Depression. San Francisco’s water rates remain higher than most to this day.
As a comparison, after San Francisco decided not to pursue developing the Mokelumne River as a source, Oakland and other cities formed the East Bay Municipal Utilities District and did so. They began their project in 1924 and finished in 1929 – less than one quarter of the time it took San Francisco to deliver its Tuolumne River water (and in 1931, the EBMUD delivered emergency supplies to drought-stricken San Francisco).
So, calling San Francisco’s system a “marvel” ignores not only its unprecedented environmental destruction, but also its cost overruns, untimely completion and deadly accidents during construction.
Brian Gray, a water policy fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California:
“San Francisco ultimately chose Hetch Hetchy Valley and the Tuolumne River because the city had already secured water rights for the location; because of the ability to deliver water by gravity; and because the water would be well-protected from pollutants, being wholly within a national park”.
See above, the East Bay Municipal Utilities District completed its project, also delivering high quality water, in less than one quarter the time.
Today, parts of the San Francisco’s original sales pitch to Congress for Hetch Hetchy have gone unfulfilled, there are no carriage rides, boats or hotels alongside the reservoir;
Professor Gray is right. Restore Hetch Hetchy is working with the National Park Service and others to improve access. People who visit will learn Hetch Hetchy’s story and often come to support restoration.
“Climate change pushes my own needle more on the cautious, skeptical side as opposed to the more idealistic, romantic side of wanting to see the valley restored,”
Fair point, but whatever hydrology brings to the Tuolumne River, there are other ways to divert and store its flows.
Jay Lund, vice director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences:
“They have lots of cheap, high-quality water without going to the trouble of managing ground water. But the city could benefit from storing more water underground, freeing up space in the reservoirs to catch rain from the storms that punctuate periods of drought,
Restore Hetch Hetchy agrees.
“As we value the environment more, we might want to get more of the environment back. The Hetch Hetchy system is sitting on a very nice piece of the environment.”
Inside Yosemite National Park, Highway 120 has a crack that is about 200 feet long and up to four feet deep. The road surface has moved two to three inches and is continuing to move. So this principal entrance to Yosemite National park will be closed until it can be fixed, at least through mid-June.
The crack on 120 is between the Big Oak Flat entrance and Crane Flat.
Hetch Hetchy is still accessible from Highway 120, and we hope more visitors will decide to venture to that special part of Yosemite National Park.
Some may recall that the original route for this road was further north, and would have allowed motorists to peer into the Hetch Hetchy canyon from the shoulder of Smith Mountain. The road was illegally rerouted after an agreement between San Francisco and NPS Director Stephen Mather – see RHH Fall 2020 Newsletterand/or our Keeping Promises report.
This coming Thursday evening, Restore Hetch Hetchy board members Lucho Rivera and Mecia Serafino will be screening Finding Hetch Hetchy at the Arc’teryx store in Palo Alto. It is a great opportunity to see the film on the big screen and especially to meet Lucho and Mecia.
Also, legendary climber Alex Honnold (he’s the “Free Solo” guy who climber El Capitan without ropes) does a really nice interview of Lucho. It’s available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Finally, we are still collecting signatures to support improved access to Hetch Hetchy. If you haven’t signed, please do so. If you have friends or family who might be interested, please encourage them to sign as well.
The worst fears of flooding last week in Yosemite were unrealized (for now) and the park has reopened.
The Merced River (measured at the Happy Isles Bridge below Vernal Falls) crested at “only” 3000 cubic feet per second at 11 PM on Saturday night. The chart below shows the flow doubling over the course of the week, as well as the hourly fluctuations which show peak flows each day around midnight.
Peak flows of 3000 CFS or greater are not uncommon – flows reach that level in 30% of all years. The highest ever recorded was 9030 CFS in 1997 after the New Year’s deluge.
On June 20, 2017, the flow at Happy Isles reached 4270 CFS – a value that may yet be surpassed this year when the weather warms up.
Last week Sacramento station KCRA posted stunning aerial video of Wapama Falls. Beginning with a close-up of water tumbling over rocks beneath the pedestrian bridges, the video then all too quickly zooms out to show the falls in their entirety – giving a sense of Wapama’s magnitude. (The combination of Wapama’s flow and height are unmatched by any of Yosemite’s outstanding waterfalls.)
Wapama also reached a peak flow of 848 CFS for the week late last night. Unfortunately the footbridges are unsafe to cross at high levels – at least 4 deaths have occurred – SO DO NOT TRY TO CROSS THE BRIDGES WHEN THEY ARE MARKED CLOSED OR WHEN THEY ARE UNDER WATER. The National Park Service has been working on improving the bridges, which they hope to have completed by next year.
The present state of the bridges at Wapama (unsafe at high water) is one more example of how visitor access has been denied to the Hetch Hetchy area of Yosemite National Park. If you have not already done so, please sign our letter to the Superintendent to support improved access at Hetch Hetchy.
Our Spring 2023 newsletter has begun arriving in mailboxes! Read it online here.
If you’d like to sign up to receive a hard copy, please send your name and address to admin@hetchhetchy.org.
The newsletter includes updates and articles such as…
This year’s record-breaking winter promises an exciting waterfall season in Hetch Hetchy.
Groundwater recharge policies can and should be improved in California, a fact highlighted by a winter of flooding.
Yosemite’s Best Kept Secret – Hetch Hetchy receives only 1% of park visitors. For the sake of restoration, we have to change that.
Updates on our Keeping Promises campaign: how Restore Hetch Hetchy is working to increase access to the area.
Congressman McClintock reintroduces the Yosemite National Park Equal Access and Fairness Act: legislation that would increase SF’s “rent” and improve recreational opportunities in Hetch Hetchy.
Restore Hetch Hetchy remembers our longtime board member Rex Hime, and our lifelong supporters, Dorothy Jean Bobbitt and Marilyn Brown, who joined our Legacy Circle this past year.
Our Annual Dinner will be held in Berkeley on October 7th, with keynote speaker Kim Stanley Robinson.
Joining our team are Marissa Leonard, Engagement & Development Director, and Carlos Antunez, Community Outreach Liaison.
Available for order are a new set of notecards by artist Lesley Goran, who designed our letterhead.
Just a touch of history. Sadly, sometimes telling lies pays off.
The San Francisco Examiner, and its Publisher William Randolph Hearst, were among the most fervent supports of damming Hetch Hetchy Valley in the early 20th Century. In 1913, as the Raker Act was headed to a crucial vote before the United States Senate, the Examiner published a special Washington DC-only issue dedicated to swaying the vote.
Some of the facts printed by the Examiner in its zeal to pass the Raker Act were debatable. And the courts found that some of the facts were not only incorrect, they were libelous.
So far, so good. It’s the Examiner’s right to advocate. However, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others have famously said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.”
The Examiner’s argument in favor of damming Hetch Hetchy did indeed go beyond stating facts. The newspaper smeared Taggart Aston, an engineer who had written to Congress opining that San Francisco could develop the Mokelumne River at lower cost (and without need to dam Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley). Describing Aston, the Examiner printed:
“Tool, sycophant or hireling of the said Eugene J. Sullivan, and, therefore, of “a thief” and “of a man who ought to be in the penitentiary” and that as such he would “stultify himself and prostitute his personal honor and professional reputation to do the servile bidding of such an employer without reference to truth and right” (Quotes from San Francisco Examiner)
As Restore Hetch Hetchy supporters know, the Raker Act the Raker bill passed the Senate on December 6, 1913, with 43 “yeas”, 25 “nays” and 28 abstentions. President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill into law on December 19, 1913. Might the vote might have been different, if Sullivan’s proposal to develop the Mokelumne River instead had been given serious consideration?
Publisher William Randolph Hearst was found guilty of libel for statement about engineer Taggart Aston.
In 1914, Taggart sued the Examiner and Hearst for defamation and won. The Examiner and Hearst appealed and lost.Taggart’s reputation was restored, but Hetch Hetchy Valley was clear cut and buried beneath 300 feet of water behind O’Shaughnessy Dam.
In 1923, Oakland, Berkeley and other East Bay cities created the East Bay Municipal Utility District and then built Pardee Dam on the Mokelumne River, delivering water to the Bay Area by 1929. EBMUD even provided emergency supplies to San Francisco in the early 1930’s before San Francisco had completed its pipelines from the Tuolumne. Since EBMUD started its project after San Francisco and finished earlier, perhaps Aston was right after all that the Mokelumne was a more practical project.
Our Spring 2023 newsletter has begun arriving in mailboxes! 
