Published August 30, 2004
When it comes to San Francisco’s environmental sensibilities, no cause is too distant, no endeavor too bold.
In recent years, San Francisco has vowed to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 20 percent and to produce enough electricity from ocean tides to power 1,000 homes.
It has voiced its support for tightening hazardous [...]
By Tom Philp — Bee Associate Editor
Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, August 30, 2004
In 1987, then-U.S. Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel and San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein visited the reservoir. Hodel’s plan to restore the valley fizzled.Photo credit: Sacramento Bee/Skip Shuman
Was he ahead of his time or out of his mind to propose what [...]
Hetch Hetchy is expendable, new tool finds
By Tom Philp — Bee Associate Editor
Published August 29, 2004
Can a computer see things that conventional wisdom overlooks?
A University of California, Davis, graduate student named Sarah Null took a new computer model that analyzes water management and asked the computer a century-old question: Does San Francisco really need [...]
Published August 29, 2004
Seventeen years ago, Interior Department Secretary Donald Hodel had a provocative idea for Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite Valley’s smaller twin:
Dismantle the dam that has kept the valley underwater since 1923, thus restoring the granite peaks and signature waterfalls to the national park system and the American public.
President Reagan’s appointee met a [...]
Katia Hetter, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s rebuild and expansion of the Sierra-fed Hetch Hetchy waterworks may be completed two years ahead of schedule in 2014, but the $3.6 billion project could cost an additional $194 million to complete, according to a state-mandated report released Tuesday.
Agency deputy manager Harlan [...]
It’s time to imagine Hetch Hetchy restored
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, August 22, 2004
Here’s the best-kept secret of Yosemite Valley: It has a twin.
This little brother, as the late naturalist John Muir called it, has a thundering waterfall named Wapama, a feathery cascade named Tueeulala and a towering peak called Kolana. Below Kolana, [...]
Nine decades after senators debated flooding Yosemite’s twin jewel, the arguments still resonate
Published August 22, 2004
More than 90 years ago, just before the stroke of midnight on Dec. 6, 1913, the U.S. Senate voted to flood one of the jewels of the national park system.
By a vote of 43-25, the senators approved San Francisco’s [...]