By Douglas Fischer
STAFF WRITER

Saturday, December 04, 2004 – Yosemite National Park may be turning a new leaf come spring. But some see even greater restoration potential on the horizon:

A remade Hetch Hetchy Valley — minus the reservoir that’s kept the valley underwater for 80 years.

In September, Environmental Defense grabbed headlines across the state with a study showing the Hetch Hetchy Valley — long called Yosemite’s twin — could be restored.

The idea is not new. In 1923, the San Francisco Public Utility Commission plugged the valley, flooded it and started storing water for the Bay Area. Calls to restore the area have been heard ever since.

But with a host of heavyweight politicians opposed and millions of Californians dependent on the reservoir’s power and water, conventional wisdom has held Half Dome will come down before the dam does.

That’s started to shift a bit.

With two key Assembly water leaders calling for an assessment and the Schwarzenegger administration promising to “review the growing body of studies and analyses” calling for restoration, advocates detected the first faint cracks in the edifice.

For the National Park Service — which remains steadfastly neutral on the politically charged issue — the idea of restoring the valley is tantalizing.

“It would be a wonderfully interesting conversation about what should happen with Hetch Hetchy, with that valley, if it were restored,” said park superintendent Mike Tollefson.

Not so fast, said California Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman, who promised the study. The review, he said, will simply continue a long-running discussion over the reservoir’s future.

“The time is ripe to have another conversation about it. We don’t know where it’s going to lead.”

Though perhaps one person does.

No California water deal in recent memory has happened without approval from the state’s senior senator. And her mind appears set.

“California needs every drop of high-quality water that it can get,” Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in response to Chrisman’s call for a study.

“I have no problem with a study and will be happy to look at the results. But I can’t see a scenario in which I would support tearing down Hetch Hetchy.”

Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com.

By Herbert A. Sample — Bee San Francisco Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, December 2, 2004

OAKLAND – A Bay Area business group has begun marshaling forces to fight the idea of restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park by dismantling an 80-year-old dam.

Concerned by public relations successes by advocates of the valley’s restoration, the Bay Area Council has begun asking members to communicate with political leaders on the issue.

“The Bay Area Council is building a coalition to oppose the removal of Hetch Hetchy,” the group’s e-mail to members stated. “To protect Hetch Hetchy is not to be hostile to environmental quality; it is to be honest and rational about the importance of water to the Bay Area.”

The group, representing 275 of the region’s largest employers, established a page on its Web site (www.bayareacouncil.org) that can generate e-mail, faxes or letters to state lawmakers.

In late September, the conservation group Environmental Defense proposed replacing Hetch Hetchy by enlarging other reservoirs, increasing use of groundwater exchanges and purchasing water from irrigation districts.

Six weeks later, the Schwarzenegger administration announced it would prepare an assessment of previous studies on the feasibility of demolishing O’Shaughnessy Dam, replacing the water and power now provided by Hetch Hetchy to Bay Area and Central Valley consumers, and restoring the valley.

Schwarzenegger aides said the state is not planning to conduct a full-blown analysis and is not taking a position on the concept.

But even before that announcement, Bay Area Council officers were taking note of the increased chatter about Hetch Hetchy and decided to launch their organizing effort.

“It’s essential,” said Andrew Michael, the council’s vice president for resources. “Basically, the Bay Area depends on this water; 2.4 million residents use the water in four different counties.”

Dozens of businesses rely on the water’s unique purity, he added. Decreasing water quality by altering the Hetch Hetchy system will “shoot another hole in the economic competitiveness of the region,” Michael said. “Our chief executive officers that we work with are saying it’s tough already, and you’re going to make it worse.”

The council also contends that demolishing the dam would lessen San Francisco’s rights to Tuolumne River water, which flows through Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and would upset the ongoing CalFed process – a state-federal program aimed at boosting water supplies and restoring the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Groups advocating Hetch Hetchy’s restoration took issue with those predictions.

Ron Good, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy, said the council’s assertions are “really scaring people, and there’s no need to be scaring anybody.”

Good added that San Francisco’s Tuolumne River rights currently are junior to those held by the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts.

Jerry Meral, a member of Restore Hetch Hetchy’s board and co-chairman of CalFed’s water supply committee, said restoring Hetch Hetchy would not damage CalFed. “That is the ultimate of ironies,” Meral said, noting that the Hetch Hetchy system is not part of CalFed and makes no releases to the San Joaquin Delta. “They don’t do anything to protect the Delta today.”

About the writer:

The Bee’s Herbert A. Sample can be reached at (510) 382-1978 or hsample@sacbee.com.

Spreck Rosekrans, Nancy E. Ryan
Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it, too. In this case, we can have Hetch Hetchy Valley and still drink the Tuolumne River’s water. As San Francisco undertakes a major revamping of its water system, the time is right to consider how to provide reliable water and power without a reservoir in Yosemite National Park. The Schwarzenegger administration apparently agrees: It is planning a study that will examine the feasibility and potential benefits of bringing back this national treasure.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer
Sunday, November 21, 2004

It has been more than 80 years since the Hetch Hetchy Valley disappeared under the waters gathered behind O’Shaughnessy Dam, but its lost High Sierra splendor still resonates with nature lovers. John Muir called Hetch Hetchy the “wonderful exact counterpart” to Yosemite Valley; old photos and narratives bear him out.

It is a valley about 9 miles long and 1 mile wide, ringed by granite walls and spires towering 2,000 feet. Before the dam, the Tuolumne River tracked through the valley floor, past verdant meadows and copses of black oak and ponderosa pine.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle.

By Herbert A. Sample — Bee San Francisco Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST Friday, November 12, 2004

OAKLAND – The Schwarzenegger administration has decided to assess studies of restoring the submerged Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, an idea that has been fiercely criticized by San Francisco business and government interests.

The governor’s intentions came to light Thursday in a letter sent on his behalf by Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman to two Assembly Democrats who have pushed for a state examination of re-establishing the valley.

Chrisman wrote that the Department of Parks and Recreation would “review the growing body” of studies on Hetch Hetchy, including analyses by Environmental Defense, a conservation group, and the University of California, Davis.

The department also will work with the National Park Service to estimate the parkland value of a restored valley.

Further, the state Department of Water Resources will “consider” the impact on water supply for 2.4 million residents on the San Francisco Peninsula, parts of Santa Clara County and the East Bay who get their water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which sits behind the 80-year-old O’Shaughnessy Dam.

“As the various interests discuss the prospect of restoring Hetch Hetchy, we must balance our dreams and aspirations, our limited financial resources, and our need for water and power reliability,” Chrisman wrote in the Nov. 8 letter.

Lester Snow, Water Resources director, stressed in an interview that the state will not conduct an exhaustive analysis of restoring Hetch Hetchy, much less take a position on removing the dam.

Rather, he said the two agencies will collect data from studies dating back at least to the 1980s, gather comment and write an assessment within a year.

“Hopefully, we can provide an objective forum where both sides or the many parties that have views on this can provide information and get it treated fairly in our assessment,” Snow said.

Restoration advocates hailed the letter as a leap forward for the politically sensitive concept.

“No one has wanted to study the issue. It’s been a hot potato,” Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, said in an interview. “But this administration is willing to take a look at it.”

Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, said in a statement that he was “very pleased this administration is ready to give this proposal the serious consideration it is due.”

Assemblyman Tim Leslie, R-Tahoe City, said the state’s first priority must remain water and electricity supplies. “But a prospect as compelling as a restored Hetch Hetchy Valley merits a deep and thorough investigation of all the facts,” he added in a statement.

Tom Graff, Environmental Defense’s regional director, called the letter “a significant step forward.”

In September, the group unveiled a study contending that the water and power provided by the reservoir and dam are replaceable for $500 million to $1.65 billion.

Critics of dismantling the dam have vowed to fight restoration, saying it would wreak havoc on Bay Area water and power supplies. San Francisco city government and the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts use electricity generated at O’Shaughnessy Dam.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has long opposed Hetch Hetchy restoration, said in a statement: “I have no problem with a study and will be happy to look at the results. But I can’t see a scenario where I would support tearing down” the dam.

About the writer:

The Bee’s Herbert A. Sample can be reached at (510) 382-1978 or hsample@sacbee.com.

Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, October 25, 2004

An emerging debate on whether to restore Yosemite’s second great valley, Hetch Hetchy, is holding true to the history of this valley and of the Tuolumne River, which runs through it.

Proposals to change anything about the river’s water resurrect controversy over water rights, over who owns what and whose claim comes first. The controversy began more than a century ago, when San Francisco proposed building a dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a smaller twin of the famous Yosemite Valley. Today, as new evidence suggests that this dam is no longer needed because San Francisco can store this same water elsewhere, there is consternation once again.

If you, like us, are intrigued by the possibility of reclaiming the Hetch Hetchy Valley and restoring this national treasure to the American public, fear not. At this stage in a Tuolumne River water debate, whether the proposal involves building a dam or draining one, lines in the sand go with the territory.

On the facing page, the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts offer some views on restoring the national park, for changes in Yosemite would directly affect them. Their perspective is important, for they hold the oldest water rights on the river, rights older than San Francisco’s. Although the dam in the national park belongs to the city of San Francisco, the dam downstream that is nearly six times the size, New Don Pedro, belongs to them.

This big downstream dam did not exist in 1913, when Congress, believing that San Francisco had no viable alternative, approved the Hetch Hetchy dam. But it exists now and could be used to help supply water for San Francisco. In addition, in the coming years there may be even more storage. San Francisco is mulling whether to build a reservoir even larger than Hetch Hetchy in the Calaveras hills (to replace a smaller, seismically unsafe one).

Since the only argument for flooding Hetch Hetchy nine decades ago was that San Francisco had no alternative, the question is obvious: With all this other storage, is a dam in Hetch Hetchy truly necessary to capture all the needed supply?

Two recent studies, one from the University of California, Davis, and another from Environmental Defense, conclude that the answer is “no.” Both studies point to New Don Pedro playing a role in any Yosemite solution.

The studies have intrigued two key water leaders in the California Assembly – Pittsburg’s Joe Canciamilla and Davis’ Lois Wolk. They are right in calling for an independent state study to better clarify the possibilities. (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has yet to respond.) An exhaustive independent study, regardless of one’s initial views about the idea, would be useful. Facts never hurt a debate. This debate could use more light than heat.

To provide a little flavor on how basic facts can be viewed differently, consider this straightforward question: Who gets to store water these days at New Don Pedro? This isn’t a trivial question. If Hetch Hetchy were drained, New Don Pedro would have to play a role in the solution.

Modesto and Turlock contend that “San Francisco does not own any water or storage rights in Don Pedro Reservoir.”

Then there is San Francisco’s perspective, as lifted straight from its Web site. The city “holds exchange storage rights of 570,000 acre feet in the New Don Pedro Reservoir.” (As an aside, that is more water storage than is available at Hetch Hetchy, more water than the Bay Area consumes from Yosemite in a year.)

So does New Don Pedro play any role in San Francisco’s water system now? Yes, a big one, according to an analysis of existing agreements by Sacramento water attorney Stuart Somach. (He should know, for he represents the Turlock district.) San Francisco indeed has the right to bank water in New Don Pedro. Modesto and Turlock control this water once it is in the reservoir, but they keep track of what water San Francisco is owed. At the moment, the city makes withdrawals from this bank upstream at Hetch Hetchy.

The rules of this water bank arrangement would need some changes if San Francisco were to store its Sierra supply in reservoirs outside of Yosemite. But regardless of what happens at Hetch Hetchy, these rules are due for a revisiting as the Bay Area prepares to expand how much Tuolumne water it can convey and capture in reservoirs.

Change has never been easy on this river. But change is coming. History tells us that this change will involve acrimony, gnashing of teeth and phalanxes of lawyers. But this time around, it is just possible that what’s good for San Francisco, Modesto and Turlock may prove to be great for Yosemite and the American public as well.

Published September 29, 2004

Try having a conversation with someone who’s hyperventilating. It’s not easy.

Take the San Francisco Bay Area leaders. They are having a hard time swallowing how some legitimate questions arise from a water plan they crafted. One question, underscored Monday by an Environmental Defense study, is whether they need to keep a spectacular valley, Hetch Hetchy, under water in Yosemite National Park.

When the gasping subsides, a little patience is in order. And a little history.

San Francisco built a dam that submerged Hetch Hetchy in 1923 to supply water and electricity to the Bay Area. While millions of tourists annually crowd into Yosemite Valley, few visit the waterfalls and granite cliffs of its twin, Hetch Hetchy Valley, because of the dam.

Are there new alternatives that would allow Yosemite to get its valley back? San Francisco’s water plan raises one possibility.

San Francisco is studying whether to build a reservoir even larger than Hetch Hetchy much closer to the Bay Area in the Calaveras hills. It would store more than a year’s supply of water and could very well render the Hetch Hetchy dam expendable.

That is the conclusion of Environmental Defense, a conservation group that hired some of the state’s top water experts to examine the issue. On Monday, the group unveiled 275 pages of data and findings, hoping to start a serious dialogue about Hetch Hetchy.

Two Bay Area leaders had their minds made up and press releases at the ready.

“This is no time to destroy an important source of water,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, as if the supply itself is somehow at risk. It is not.

“Environmental groups and Southern California are conspiring to pry away the Bay Area’s hold on its water supply,” said the Bay Area Council’s Jim Wunderman. “Today’s study release … is just one small step in this quiet, plodding effort.”

Why would respected leaders brush off Environmental Defense, when the merits of an impressive study are worth discussing? The Hetch Hetchy dam is upstream on the Tuolumne River from a reservoir nearly six times as large. That reservoir is New Don Pedro, and it rests over existing pipelines to the Bay Area. Environmental Defense experts studied how to maximize the use of New Don Pedro, and the proposed new reservoir in Calaveras.

The findings boil down to this: Storing and drawing water from these two reservoirs – New Don Pedro and Calaveras – could solve 97 percent of the Bay Area’s future water challenge. Sound far-fetched, particularly using New Don Pedro for storage? Consider that San Francisco has been storing water in New Don Pedro through a complex water exchange arrangement with its owners, the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts, for 33 years.

The Environmental Defense findings echo those of a previous computer analysis by the University of California, Davis. They both point to the conclusion that the Bay Area needs this Yosemite supply. They both question, however, the future need of storing the water in the national park.

The political hyperventilating could be eased with a steady flow of dispassionate facts. The only respected, independent source is the state. That is why two Northern California legislators with a special interest in water -Assemblyman Joseph Canciamilla of Pittsburg and Lois Wolk of Davis -reiterated their call for a state study on Monday. They await a response from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his water leader, Lester Snow.

Nobody is asking the Bay Area to give up any water. Nothing horrible is about to happen. Something magnificent might happen that would restore a valley in a national park. A serious conversation is appropriate for the future of a national public asset.

Published September 19, 2004

The last time the Hetch Hetchy Valley emerged from 300 feet of Sierra water was during the severe drought of 1991.

To quench the Bay Area’s thirst, San Francisco water officials sucked the reservoir almost dry. For a brief time they uncovered the glacial valley that had inspired paintings and prose a century before.

But in 1991, the Hetch Hetchy Valley looked more dead than alive.

One-hundred-year-old tree stumps studded the barren landscape. A dusting of silt and pebbles covered the valley floor. There were no signs of the valley’s lush meadow. Gone were the groves of oaks and pine. The valley that naturalist John Muir championed in the early 20th century was unrecognizable.

Congressmen didn’t listen to Muir in 1913, when he lobbied to leave Hetch Hetchy Valley intact for the American public as part of Yosemite National Park. They allowed San Francisco to build a dam and flood it in 1923. Only on unusual occasions, when serious droughts demand it, does the valley emerge again from its underwater fate.

Hetch Hetchy, the smaller twin of Yosemite Valley, might look dead on those occasions, but it’s not, according to federal biologists who studied the matter. Its state is rather like that of a deep sleep.

A team of scientists from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Game and the National Park Service came together in 1988 to study the matter. Their job was to examine a controversial proposal by Donald Hodel, President Reagan’s secretary of the interior. Hodel wanted Hetch Hetchy restored for the national park.

San Francisco leaders howled in protest. Hodel got nowhere with his idea. But credit him and the scientists who prepared the Interior Department report. They figured out the science of the restoration if not the politics.

A restoration of Hetch Hetchy wouldn’t be a quick makeover. The scientists examined the main issues and concluded:

• The dam must stay, or at least a very large section of it must remain. San Francisco dug 118 feet below the riverbed to build the foundation for the dam. “The removal of the lower 118 feet of the dam would vastly change the river gradient at the narrow lower end of the valley and would probably lead to rapid erosion of the meadows in the lower chamber of Hetch Hetchy,” the scientists said.
• The sediment isn’t as big a problem as one might think. On many rivers, a dam will capture tons of loose dirt and small rocks and transport the sediment toward the sea. That didn’t happen at Hetch Hetchy, which is a good thing. If it had, the valley would be more dead than alive. The sediment load “appears quite low,” the scientists said. “The Tuolumne River descends from a watershed comprised largely of thin soils and great expanses of exposed and glaciated rock.” (In 1991, barely an inch of sediment covered the floor.)
• The river channel probably remains. “The aquatic ecosystem of the Tuolumne River will return to near pristine conditions without management intervention,” the scientists said.
• Two options exist for grasses, plants and trees. Let nature do the job, or manage what grows back. By leaving things alone, “within two years extensive areas on the floor of Hetch Hetchy valley would be covered with grasses, sedges and rushes. … Willows would begin to colonize the riverbanks.” The drawbacks: Grasses wouldn’t be native grasses, and the native pines and oaks might face some competition. If the valley were managed, after five years, “conifers would be up to 15 feet high and black oaks would be about six feet high in areas planted the first year.”
• The valley would have a “bathtub ring,” but it wouldn’t last forever. Eighty-one years of storing water has left a line along the granite walls. “It is the result of impounded water killing the native rock lichen colonies, which cover the granite walls. Natural restoration of such colonies would take between 80 and 120 years.”
• Wildlife would return, possibly at breakneck speed. Deer would return in the first year and black bears soon afterward.

As the scientists reported, awakening Hetch Hetchy is not a physical impossibility. It is a political challenge, and one that is receiving a fresh look by the University of California, Environmental Defense and others. They are unearthing some surprisingly achievable options, such as relying on three other dams on the Tuolumne River to store the water Hetch Hetchy supplies for the Bay Area today. Legislators have shown an interest: This week the head of the California Assembly’s water committee, Joseph Canciamilla of Pittsburg, and Assemblywoman Lois Wolk of Davis, both Democrats, asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to study Hetch Hetchy anew.

The fate of a spectacular valley in a national park is worth another look. Restoration would certainly take years, even decades. But as a natural marvel, united once again with the Yosemite Valley to the south, Hetch Hetchy would be something to behold.

Muir said it best in 1890: “Imagine yourself in Hetch Hetchy. It is a sunny day in June, the pines sway dreamily, and you are shoulder-deep in grass and flowers. Looking across the valley through beautiful open groves you see a bare granite wall 1,800 feet high rising abruptly out of the green and yellow vegetation and glowing with sunshine, and in front of it the fall, waving like a downy scarf, silver bright, burning with white sun-fire in every fiber. … It is a flood of singing air, water, and sunlight woven into cloth that spirits might wear.”

For now that scene is a memory, a national treasure hidden away, underwater. It doesn’t have to be that way. With political champions, the vista could become a reality once more, a place to be experienced and savored by all who visit our national park.

Published September 5, 2004

Naturalist, author and activist John Muir introduced Yosemite to the outside world more than a century agothrough his exquisite writings. He championed the creation of the national park. And when San Francisco proposed to dam one of Yosemite’s two deep glacial valleys – the Hetch Hetchy Valley on the Tuolumne River – Muir led the opposition. In 1913, he failed. Congress granted the city the authority to build the dam and establish its water supply in the national park. Less than a year later, Muir died at age 76.

That did little to diminish Muir, then and now, as the leading voice for Hetch Hetchy. No living activist ever saw the valley before it was flooded. It was submerged in 1923.

Muir’s role, as the witness and environmental conscience for the debate over the valley, is unchanged. His lasting power comes from his extensive collection of articles and letters about Yosemite, about San Francisco, about politics. They are remarkably timeless. So timeless, that with a little journalistic license, questions facing Hetch Hetchy today can be answered using quotations from Muir’s writings nearly a century ago. The imaginary conversation would go something like this:

Bee: Congratulations on Gov. Schwarzenegger choosing your image to adorn the official California quarter.

Muir: You don’t know how accomplished a lobbyist I’ve become.

Bee: And Yosemite Valley will be on the quarter as well.

Muir: Valleys.

Bee: Pardon us.

Muir: Nature is not so poor as to have only one of anything. Hetch Hetchy is one of a magnificent brotherhood of Yosemite valleys.

Bee: We have only seen Yosemite Valley. Hetch Hetchy could not possibly compare.

Muir: It is a wonderfully exact counterpart of the great Yosemite.

Bee: So where is its El Capitan?

Muir: Standing boldly forward from the south wall near the lower end of the valley is the rock Kolana. Facing Kolana on the north side of the valley is a rock about 1,800 feet in height, which represents a bare sheer front like El Capitan.

Bee: OK, where’s Hetch Hetchy’s big “Yosemite Fall?”

Muir: The great Hetch Hetchy fall, called Wapama by the Tuolumnes … is about 1,800 feet in height, and seems to be nearly vertical when one is standing in front of it. Its location is similar to that of the Yosemite Fall.

Bee: A miniature of the Yosemite Fall?

Muir: The volume of water is much greater.

Bee: But is there a fall as delicate as Bridal Veil?

Muir: Tueeulala. It makes a free descent of a thousand feet and then breaks up into ragged, foaming web of cascades among the boulders of an earthquake talus. The only fall that I know with which it may fairly be compared is the Bridal Veil, but it excels even that.

Bee: Sounds peaceful. But Hetch Hetchy is peaceful these days because it is submerged.

Muir: It would be just the same thing as saying that flooding Yosemite would do it no harm.

Bee: But this is San Francisco’s water supply.

Muir: I am heartily in favour of a Sierra or even a Tuolumne water supply for San Francisco, but all the water required can be obtained from sources outside the park.

Bee: Are you surprised that all these years later the Hetch Hetchy debate is still alive?

Muir: Never for a moment have I believed that the American people would fail to defend it.

Bee: It all boils down to money. Probably taxpayer money. Or water ratepayer money. How much should be thrown at San Francisco, Modesto and Turlock to restructure their water supplies and water agreements to regain Hetch Hetchy?

Muir: Woe is he and thee and me and all the world’s beauty-lovers that such dollar-dotted tangles should approach our sacred Sierra temple.

Bee: There you go. This is why you failed back in 1913. Where’s the pragmatism?

Muir: We are preparing data … which will demonstrate that San Francisco can obtain abundance of pure water from other sources than Hetch Hetchy.

Bee: Data?

Muir: They will see what I mean in time.

Bee: Soon maybe? San Francisco may have to look at options, including Hetch Hetchy, as a legal requirement to expand its plumbing system. That would be a first.Would you settle for a fair independent study of how to ween the city from Yosemite and see just how feasible this truly is – or isn’t?

Muir: Evidently we have to fight the battle all over again, and must stir our pegs accordingly. Truth and right must prevail at last. How this business Hetch-hetches one’s time. It won’t even let me sleep.

This editorial draws from the writings of the late naturalist John Muir, who died in 1914, less than a year after Congress decided to allow San Francisco to build a dam in the valley. Here are the sources for the quotations:

“You don’t know how accomplished …”

Letter to Robert Underwood Johnson, July 16, 1906

“Nature is not so poor …”

“The Yosemite,” 1912

“Hetch Hetchy is one of …”

Boston Weekly Transcript, March 25, 1873

“It is a wonderfully exact counterpart …”

Sierra Club Bulletin, January 1908

“Standing boldly forward …”

The Century Magazine, September 1890

“The great Hetch Hetchy fall …”

The Century Magazine, September 1890

“The volume of water …”

The Century Magazine, September 1890

“Tueeulala. It makes a free descent …”

The Century Magazine, September 1890

“It would be just the same …”

Letter to Robert Underwood Johnson, March 23, 1905

“I am heartily in favour …”

Letter to President Theodore Roosevelt, April 21, 1908

“Never for a moment …”

Unpublished journals, 1913

“Woe is he and thee …”

Notes, undated, circa 1908, John Muir Papers, University of the Pacific Library

“We are preparing data …”

The Outlook, Aug. 13, 1913

“They will see …”

“The Life of John Muir,” 1945

“Evidently we have to fight …”

Letter to William Colby, Feb. 15, 1905

“Truth and right …”

Letter to William Colby, December 1908

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 chemical regulations in the European Union and protecting arctic Alaska from oil development.

It has discouraged consumption of Chilean sea bass and promoted the pro-vegetarian Great American Meatout.

It plans to recycle 75 percent of its garbage and wants to convert restaurant grease into fuel for city buses.

It promises someday to appropriately honor an environmental hero of the Bay Area, the late David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club and founder of Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute.

“[He] awakened us to our responsibility to enrich and protect our habitat,” according to a city proclamation, which calls for “a suitable and permanent memorial.”

But did Brower truly awaken San Francisco? He certainly didn’t think so, at least where it mattered most.

Brower spent a half-century following the lead of the great naturalist John Muir. Like Muir, Brower championed the goal of providing two spectacular valleys in Yosemite National Park, not just the Yosemite Valley most tourists see today. Like Muir, Brower failed.

Muir died in 1914, having failed to stop Congress from approving a plan to flood Hetch Hetchy Valley with 300 feet of Sierra water. Brower died in 2000, having failed in his efforts to restore Hetch Hetchy to the American public.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, San Francisco has been steadfast in its contention that a municipal reservoir is the highest use of Hetch Hetchy. In 1913, Congress agreed with San Francisco and approved the dam’s construction. Since 1923, Hetch Hetchy has been underwater, relegated to obscurity. Today, it is the least visited natural feature in the park.

Like Muir, Brower implored San Francisco to get its water elsewhere on the Tuolumne River, outside Yosemite National Park. San Francisco never did.

“It belongs to everybody,” Brower said of the Hetch Hetchy Valley when he visited it in May 2000, six months before he died. “We happen to be the current custodians. And San Francisco happens to be the current pirates.”

Hetch Hetchy is San Francisco’s great civic contradiction. While the city’s environmental agenda spans the globe, it keeps a glacial valley locked away close to home. San Francisco claims part of a national park, a public treasure, for its own utilitarian purposes of securing water and electricity.

Hetch Hetchy provides nearly 85 percent of San Francisco’s water and a major portion of the supply for San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties. The system, then and today, is an engineering marvel. It captures and conveys water for 160 miles solely by gravity’s force, along the way spinning turbines that provide electricity to run the city’s famous cable cars and other municipal services.

The water system is no ordinary source of civic pride. Hetch Hetchy, said the former mayor Dianne Feinstein, is the city’s “birthright.” No wonder that by 1988 she had quashed the effort by Interior Secretary Donald Hodel to study the valley’s restoration.

Nothing, in San Francisco’s view, seems broken. What is there to fix? Nothing, if the view is a narrow one.

But if Californians pull back and take a broader look, they will see that Hetch Hetchy is not San Francisco’s birthright. It is the country’s. In Yosemite, buried beneath glacial waters, is part of a park that was set aside for all Americans. Surely San Franciscans and Feinstein, now a U.S. Senator and the state’s most seasoned leader on water issues, can envision the grandeur of a national park made whole.

Modern-day environmentalism calls for examining old assumptions, rebalancing public values and accepting new findings. Some decisions need recalibrating, especially ones made 90 years ago.

Could San Francisco, as Brower and Muir said, get its water someplace other than Yosemite National Park? Researchers at the University of California, Davis, asked the question and, with a computer’s help, found that it could. San Francisco could take its water downstream, from the New Don Pedro Dam, whose reservoir is more than five times Hetch Hetchy’s size. A replacement reservoir, Calaveras, proposed in the East Bay, would be larger than Hetch Hetchy.

There is ample reason to ponder a different future for Yosemite Valley’s little twin – to talk about restoring Hetch Hetchy, modifying the Tuolumne River water system, replacing lost hydropower and removing San Francisco from the national park.

This will be a serious and contentious discussion for the state as well as for San Francisco. But it will be worth the trouble.

Imagine the possibilities. No longer would San Francisco be, as Brower declared it years ago, the pirate with the stolen national treasure. Instead, a city that prides itself on environmentalism could set its sights on a new cause: restoring Hetch Hetchy, a public jewel close to home.