[Dryerase] The Alarm!--Hetch Hetchy

[The Alarm!Newswire]

Hetch Hetchy, restore the valley or rebuild the dam

by Halie Johnson
The Alarm! Newspaper Collective

In 1913 John Muir, the famed Sierra conservationist, lost a lengthy 
legal battle to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park 
from being dammed. The City and County of San Francisco wanted the 
valley for a municipal water supply.

The project to build the Hetch Hetchy reservoir on the Tuolomne River 
began in 1914 and took 20 years to complete. Today, water from Hetch 
Hetchy travels more than 160 miles to serve 2.4 million customers in 
San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties.

On May 5, 2002, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) 
approved a $3.6 billion plan to rebuild the Hetch Hetchy water system. 
The plan includes 77 projects, of which 40 are local to San Francisco 
and 37 are regional. The projects are designed to repair and replace 
aging facilities, implement hydropower projects, provide safe water 
quality, seismically upgrade facilities and provide for additional 
water supply.

The SFPUC voted to request that the Board of Supervisors place a 
project-funding measure (Proposition A) on the November 2002 San 
Francisco ballot. If Proposition A passes in November, it will allot 
over $1.6 billion to the plan, which is scheduled to begin in 2003 and 
be complete by 2016.	

SFPUC General Manager, Patricia Martel, has been instrumental in 
formulating the plan to rebuild Hetch Hetchy. To better insure that 
funds are available for the plan, Martel recommended that the SFPUC 
delay a proposal to upgrade San Francisco’s sewer system. This proposal 
included projects to enhance the facilities reliability and reduce 
odors. Instead of the $900 million sewage upgrade plan, Martel 
recommended the development of a citywide sewer master plan that 
includes the reduction of sewage sent to the Southeast treatment plant.

According to the SFPUC “The adoption of a long-term capitol plan for 
the rebuild of Hetch Hetchy and the local water system has been 
Martel’s number one priority since her appointment to the SFPUC in 
September.”

Environmental groups see Proposition A as an opportunity to interject 
the option of restoring Hetch Hetchy to the valley John Muir lead the 
fight to preserve. Organizations including Restore Hetch Hetchy, 
Environmental Defense and the Planning and Conservation League are 
urging voters to vote no on Proposition A, saying: “[Proposition A] 
would cause a large expansion of the water system without an unbiased 
feasibility study to demonstrate environmentally sound ways of 
restoring Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy Valley.” San Francisco 
supervisors claim they were pressed for time and could not conduct such 
a study.

The environmental activists, attorneys and businesspeople who make up 
Restore Hetch Hetchy, have posed as a counter-option the expansion of 
the Calavares Reservoir (near Palo Alto). They said it would “provide 
an opportunity to replace lost water storage capacity when the Hetch 
Hetchy Reservoir is drained and would increase the reliability of the 
current water delivery system for San Francisco Bay Area water users.”

Restore Hetch Hetchy has set its goal for dam deconstruction as 2013 
and say that it could take a century, more or less, to restore Hetch 
Hetchy to its pre-reservoir condition. “Think of our children’s 
children. In the meantime, you will be witness to one of the the 
greatest wild lands restoration projects ever undertaken.”

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