Restore Hetch Hetchy usually appreciates media coverage. Sometimes it is in our favor, as was Tom Philp’s Pulitzer Prize winning 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).
Most of the time, journalists provide balanced coverage, including various viewpoints. This was the case in Thursday’s front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle: What does future hold for reservoir? Divisive Hetch Hetchy turns 100 as stakeholders weigh its fate.
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.”
Restore Hetch Hetchy agrees. Do we ever.