San Francisco Mayor London Breed has nominated City Attorney Dennis Herrera to be the next General Manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. If confirmed by the Commission, Herrera will replace Michael Carlin who has been Acting General Manager since Harlan Kelly’s resignation last fall.
We respect and honor Herrera, as we do all members and staff of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Providing reliable water to San Francisco and other Bay Area communities is an essential task.
Our issue with San Francisco, as Senator Lois Wolk explains, is not over its use of Tuolumne River water but rather how it is stored. No other city has destroyed a national treasure to find a place to store its water.
At Restore Hetch Hetchy, we will always acknowledge the importance of providing reliable water supplies as we contest San Francisco’s continued use of Hetch Hetchy as a storage tank. In our view, San Francisco officials should reciprocate by recognizing the merits of our campaign. Unfortunately, most of the City’s public statements in opposition to Restore Hetch Hetchy, such as the one Herrera made in 2018, fail to acknowledge that the reservoir lies inside Yosemite National Park.
We can do better. We can restore Hetch Hetchy without losing a drop of water. We suspect City leaders in San Francisco will be among the last to endorse restoration. Until they do, we ask that they pay us a modicum of respect by acknowledging our worthy objective of restoring a spectacular landscape in a national park.