Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, November 28, 2004

A beautiful Sierra landscape. A vital California city. An old water right that allowed the city to alter the landscape. A new call to reconsider that decision.

These elements drive the growing discussion about Yosemite National Park, the home of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a smaller twin of Yosemite Valley. Submerged since 1923 by a dam for San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy is getting a second look. Two new studies show alternative ways to store the same water that Hetch Hetchy now holds. Two key Assembly water leaders are seeking a full assessment about whether to drain the reservoir, and now the Schwarzenegger administration is stepping forward to help lead an independent review.

Assessing the highest public use of a treasured piece of land is no new role for the state.

Remember Mono Lake.

Two decades ago, the troubled lake in the eastern Sierra faced many of the same questions as Hetch Hetchy today. Los Angeles had an ironclad legal right to divert water from creeks that feed the lake. This was slowly draining the lake, endangering the bird habitat. Restoration advocates challenged the water right before the state. They claimed that the public placed a higher value on a restored lake than on a replaceable water source. They argued the state’s job is to calibrate competing public values – a spectacular setting versus a municipal water supply – and look to the future, not history, for a proper decision.

The arguments persuaded the California Supreme Court. “The two streams of legal thought have been on a collision course,” wrote the justices in 1983 about water rights versus the public. At Mono Lake, a vital estuary, “\[t\]hey meet in a unique and dramatic setting which highlights the clash of values.”

Now, Mono Lake is on its way to recovery. (The hot issue at the moment is a controversial residential development proposed within the lake’s official scenic area.) Los Angeles replaced its lost water supply. And the high court’s words still stand as powerful notice: “The state can no more abdicate its trust over property in which the whole people are interested … than it can abdicate its police powers.”

It took a lengthy legal battle before the high court’s ruling led to a state water board’s examining the situation. The board analyzed the public benefits of Mono Lake’s restoration and ultimately decided what to do. The board chose to reduce the amount Los Angeles diverted so the water level could rise and the lake could be restored.

Fortunately with Hetch Hetchy, years of court battles weren’t needed to persuade the state to assess different futures and calculate benefits. Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman said his state staff hopes to “work with the National Park Service to identify accepted economic approaches to estimate a parkland value for a restored Hetch Hetchy Valley.”

For San Francisco, its water right isn’t at risk. Where its Tuolumne River water would be stored is at issue. One possibility is just downstream, New Don Pedro Reservoir, which is nearly six times the size of Hetch Hetchy. It already serves as a water bank for the Hetch Hetchy system. Another storage possibility is in the Bay Area, where San Francisco proposes to build a reservoir even larger than Hetch Hetchy in the Calaveras hills. All the same pipelines and tunnels that move water today from the Sierra to San Francisco could still be used.

It will take cooperation and ideas from all the major users of the Tuolumne River – San Francisco, surrounding Bay Area counties, and Modesto and Turlock – to help the state. Its job of making the most of California’s resources is never over.

“The state,” wrote the California Supreme Court in 1983, “is not confined by past [water] allocation decisions which may be incorrect in light of current knowledge or inconsistent with current needs.”