Thanks to all our supporters, 2023 has been a productive year for our collective campaign to restore a long-lost public treasure.
Photo: Matt Ashby Wolfskill
2023 has indeed been a wonderfully wet year. The extended snowmelt fueled Yosemite’s famous waterfalls and brought huge crowds to Yosemite. Many visitors, wanting to avoid congestion, opted to wander through the Hetch Hetchy entrance for the first time. Many of these people will learn why there is a reservoir in a national park, that there is a campaign to relocate the reservoir outside of Yosemite and ultimately support that campaign.
We are pleased Restore Hetch Hetchy has been able to encourage the National Park Service to extend the hours that Hetch Hetchy has been open to the public. The NPS also is planning to improve the campground, repair the boat ramp and provide visitors better information about the area’s human and natural history.
We will soon meet with the National Park Service and will ask them to respond to the legal petition we submitted in September. If they agree with our assertions that camping, boating etc. must be allowed, what will they do to comply? If they do not agree, why not?
There was another positive outcome from this past extraordinarily wet year. Local and national media covered the need and opportunity to recharge groundwater basins as never before. Governor Newsom eased regulations and repeatedly asked the Department of Water Resources if “we” were doing all we could. In San Francisco’s case the answer is no. The City and irrigation districts in the Tuolumne watershed could do far more to capture flows in very wet years like 2023 (and 2019, 2017, 2011, 2006, 2005 etc.). We and others, however, have successfully encouraged the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to pursue cost-effective recharge programs that would improve supply and help obviate the need for a reservoir in Yosemite National Park.
It’s with your support that we are able to create change. If you’d like to make a contribution to Restore Hetch Hetchy, you can do so online or by mail to the address below:
Restore Hetch Hetchy
3286 Adeline Street
Suite #7
Berkeley, CA 94703
Tax identification number: # 77-0551533