By: John Upton
Examiner Staff Writer
12/28/09 9:15 AM PST

SAN FRANCISCO — Julie Labonte didn’t know what her high-achieving career as a water engineer held in store for her as she bounded down Mount Kilimanjaro in 2005, propelled by gravity, in the midst of a yearlong globetrot.

The Canadian-born, U.S.-trained engineer had walked away from an illustrious career with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission for a multi-continental jaunt, peppered with frequent climbs of rugged mountains.

While working for the SFPUC — which oversees such services as water and sewers around the region — in San Francisco and its suburbs over a decade, Labonte had managed fluoridation of the water supply, a water treatment plant, utilities strategies for major redevelopment projects and massive sewer improvements.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner.

BAWSCA supports the SFPUC’s cautious management of the limited water supply and the timely and prudent call for customers’ continued conservation of water and further reductions in water use as we go into the hot summer season.

In summary, there is cause for concern.

* March precipitation was 75 percent less than average and April precipitation was about 25 percent less than average.
* The April 1st snow pack is less than half of average.
* If no further rainfall occurs, this will be the 15th driest year in the last 88 years.
* Water currently available to the City is only 20% of normal for this time of year and most of the wet months are behind us.
* The system’s reservoirs in the Sierras are projected to fill by June. However, there will be little water stored as snow in the Sierras.
* The limited supply may represent the first year of a drought.
* A 10 percent system-wide reduction in water use may be necessary to preserve the limited supply and avoid significant water use reductions next year.

Like San Francisco, 19 of BAWSCA’s 27 agencies rely on San Francisco’s regional water system for over 90 percent of the supply for their residents, businesses and community organizations. The remaining agencies get a portion of their supply from other sources of water that may or may not be affected by the current dry conditions.

In 2005-06, the average water use per person throughout the 27 agencies was 88 gallons per person per day. That’s 15 percent lower than in 1986-87, prior to the last drought, and 23 percent lower than in 1976-77.

Of the water used by the 27 agencies, about 60 percent is used by 1.7 million residents and 40 percent by businesses and community organizations.

John Garamendi
Friday, August 5, 2005

As Californians, we now have the opportunity to do something truly great for our state, our children and for generations to come. We can, and should, restore the magnificence of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Today, there is great momentum to support this effort. It is a window of opportunity that may not come again. Therefore, we must act now.

With its great waterfalls thundering from towering granite cliffs onto a serene valley floor, Hetch Hetchy was described by John Muir as Yosemite Valley’s “wonderfully exact counterpart.” Like its better-known twin, Hetch Hetchy Valley was born of uplifted granite scoured by glacial forces, leaving a monument of breathtaking beauty.

Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle.

Jenna Olsen
Friday, August 5, 2005

This summer, waterfalls that normally trickle instead roar, rivers surge through their channels at higher flows than usual, and the fishing is outstanding. Vacationers are soaking in the glories of rivers like the spectacular Tuolumne, which flows through Yosemite National Park, the Stanislaus National Forest and the Central Valley.

Only in years such as this, with exceptionally abundant snowpack and water, do we see California’s rivers and bays approximating the health and splendor they displayed before they were dammed and diverted to provide water for families, farms and businesses. While the Golden State’s highly engineered water system has brought benefits, it has also come at a great cost.

Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle.

By Jay R. Lund and Sarah E. Null — Special To The Bee
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, June 26, 2005

San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy water supply system was a marvel of engineering and public administration when constructed in the 1920s and now provides reliable, inexpensive and high-quality water to 2.4 million people in the San Francisco Bay area. It is also the heart of a conversation about tradeoffs.

From an engineering perspective, the Hetch Hetchy water project is a classic, early 20th century system that used a remote, largely inaccessible, mountain watershed to deliver pristine water requiring minimal treatment. Hydropower was a side benefit.

New York City, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles’ Owens Valley and Mono Lake supplies are other such systems. After many decades, these systems, with modifications, still serve their original purposes.

The last 80 years have brought great improvements in drinking-water technology. Water treatment was in its infancy when the Hetch Hetchy system was built. It is now nearly universal. Waterworks filtration is now required for all surface drinking-water sources – with rare exceptions for heavily monitored remote watersheds – including Hetch Hetchy. If Hetch Hetchy lost its status as an unfiltered supply, then filtration, costing roughly $1 billion, would be required, just as it is for municipalities across the nation.

During the same eight decades, the country has experienced tremendous growth in demand for public recreation and national parks. When O’Shaughnessy Dam was built at Hetch Hetchy, John Muir and others valued the quality of Hetch Hetchy Valley, but such wilderness resources were relatively abundant for California’s 1920 population of 3.4 million. Now that California has 35 million souls, a more prosperous economy and alternative water supply options, the tradeoff of a unique recreational valley for one part of a classical water supply is being revisited.

Research at the University of California, Davis, explored water supply alternatives for San Francisco if O’Shaughnessy Dam were removed, allowing the Hetch Hetchy Valley to be restored. A pipeline between the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct and the much larger New Don Pedro Reservoir downstream would allow almost all of the water captured at O’Shaughnessy Dam to be captured downstream with little loss of water quality. Drinking water supply is less of a problem than the costs.

The idea of connecting the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct to additional existing storage on the Tuolumne River shows promise for restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley but is far from a detailed proposal and does not prove that removing O’Shaughnessy Dam is worthwhile.

Even if shown to be worthwhile, substantial economic and political barriers must be crossed, including how to pay for the changes and deal with lost hydropower, perhaps some lost flood control and cooperative agreements between San Francisco and local agricultural water users. If the Tuolumne River System can provide substantially similar benefits without O’Shaughnessy Dam and the people of San Francisco come to support change, the political and media controversy on this issue might well melt away, as it did with the more drastic case of Mono Lake restoration. For restoration to occur, a renewed Hetch Hetchy Valley, like O’Shaughnessy Dam 80 years ago, probably must become a source of pride for San Francisco.

As California’s population grows, drinking water standards become more stringent and water supply options for cities diversify (with desalination, treatment, water trades and water conservation), a restored Hetch Hetchy Valley might become a feature of a multiple-use Tuolumne River system.

To some, Hetch Hetchy will represent the defense of traditional water projects versus the opportunity to restore a unique valley. Nevertheless, this example of examining changes and opportunities that entail difficult decisions illustrates the challenges and the need for more serious and creative water analysis and management for all of California. Much like Mono Lake, Owens Valley, the Salton Sea and the Delta, the case of Hetch Hetchy is merely a vignette in the continuing saga of California noisily adapting its water resources to changing technologies, economic conditions and social expectations.

About the writers:

Jay R. Lund is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and Sarah E. Null is a doctorate student in geography, both at the University of California, Davis. The two used a computer model known as CALVIN, invented by Lund, to study Hetch Hetchy and the possibility of removing the dam.

Thu, May 26, 2005
By Mike Taugher

SAN FRANCISCO – The nation’s top natural resources official cast a cup of cold, mountain water Wednesday on an ambitious proposal to tear out a century-old dam and restore Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.

“We have not closed any doors on anything, but what I see is a scarcity of water throughout the West,” said Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

Norton made the remarks during a brief question-and-answer session with reporters after speaking here to the Commonwealth Club of California.

Hetch Hetchy, which was compared favorably to Yosemite Valley by John Muir before it was flooded, serves as a water supply reservoir for the city of San Francisco and the Peninsula.

Norton said she sees a need for more water storage to counter western droughts. “The issue of Hetch Hetchy seems to be going the other way in terms of doing away with a large supply of water.”

Prompted by recent studies, including one by Environmental Defense, the California Resources Agency is reviewing the feasibility of tearing out the dam, restoring the valley and finding other water storage options for about 2 million people.

Environmentalists say other storage sites are available, including Don Pedro Reservoir downstream on the Tuolumne River.

San Francisco officials have historically been extremely reluctant to even consider tearing out the dam, which is considered by city officials to be an engineering marvel and a source of crisp clean water coming straight out of a granite bowl.

“It is a huge undertaking to remove a dam, as well as find alternative water supplies,” Norton said.

Norton, the first woman to head the Interior Department, oversees the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the top federal agencies in charge of water development and delivery and enforcement of the Endangered Species Act.

In her speech to the club, Norton defended the Bush Administration’s environmental policies, saying they are designed to face subtler, more complex issues than the obvious environmental crises of the 1960s and 1970s.

She expressed support for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, said the administration supports a moratorium on offshore drilling in California and asserted that the nation needs to produce more domestic energy and build nuclear power plants.

Asked why the administration has declined to take aggressive steps on global climate change, Norton said, “There certainly seems to be warming that is occurring. There is less consensus about what is causing climate change and whether it is something that is a fluctuation or truly is a long-term phenomenon.”

Norton’s major water initiative, called Water 2025, was one of the few federal natural resource initiatives in recent years to be well-received by environmentalists. The House of Representatives this week declined to provide any of the $30 million requested by the Bush Administration.

Norton suggested the lack of funding was not important, saying that a bill that would clear the way for money would “not be very extensive or very controversial.”

Wednesday, March 23, 2005
By Edward Carpenter
Daily News Staff Writer

Independent auditors will be hired to double-check San Francisco Public Utilities Commission calculations regarding the increasing costs of the Hetch Hetchy Water System overhaul, Bay Area water officials said yesterday.

“I do have some questions,” said Art Jensen, general manager of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency. “I’m going to have two outside experts review it.” The agency represents 28 Bay Area governments and water districts outside San Francisco, including San Mateo County. The 80-year-old system, which delivers water to about 2.5 million Bay Area residents from near Yosemite, is vulnerable to earthquakes and could leave the region without water for as long as 60 days if were to break, officials have said.

Jensen said that input from the auditors would help convince him that the methodology, factors and costs of the utility commission proposal are sound or that there are questions that need to be explored further.

The announcement that the Conservation Agency will hire the two auditors comes the same day that the commission released the most detailed breakdown yet of the nearly $1 billion in additional costs announced Feb. 8, raising the total cost from about $3.6 billion to more than $4.3 billion.

As reported in the Daily News Monday, Jensen, along with Conservation Agency board members, have continued to take the utilities commission–the agency heading up the Hetch Hetchy Water System rebuild–to task for its lack of clarity and openness regarding the cost and time it will take to complete the project. The utilities commission took a major step in trying to assuage critics yesterday by voting to raise San Francisco water rates by 15 percent both in the current year and coming year to help pay off the bond debt for the rebuild.

“It’s us honoring our commitment to step forward and issue the bonds for the rebuild,” said Tony Winnicker, commission spokesman, describing the vote.

San Francisco residents, on average, will pay about $1.10 more per month for water under the new rates, officials said.

Ken Garcia
Monday, January 31, 2005

THERE ARE at least a few million good reasons why San Francisco needs to fix the aging and fragile Hetch Hetchy water system within the next decade, but the most compelling one is a simple number: 37.

That figure represents how many years it has been since city engineers were able to inspect the condition of the Irvington Tunnel, a critical part of the pressurized labyrinth through which 95 percent of all the crystal clear Sierra water — on which 2.5 million Bay Area residents depend — passes.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Tim Holt
Sunday, January 16, 2005

San Francisco, tear down that dam.

But the hometown of the Sierra Club dithers over the fate of Hetch Hetchy, the main holding tank for city water in Yosemite National Park, while a Republican governor takes the lead by default. The city’s fearless leader, Mayor Gavin Newsom, is a study in equivocation, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, confusing dams with rivers, makes ludicrous statements about the “destruction” of the source of the city’s water.

If the prologue is any indication, we’re in for some great political theater.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle.

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.