Article on Movement to Restore Hetch Hetchy Valley

Voters to Determine Fate of Hetch Hetchy
Published in Faultline Magazine, November 2002

by Christine Sculati

In the high country of Yosemite National Park, Ron Good follows the Tuolumne River west as it snakes through meadows and spills thunderously over steep precipices. Now deep in a canyon dwarfed by sheer granite walls, he crosses the river by bridge and climbs out of the gorge on a steep trail. Good reaches a promontory, where he solemnly watches the wild river meet its end. "After following the river as it sings and dances, you look down here and it just goes dead. Tree logs foam around at the head of the reservoir,." says Good.

In John Muir’s time, the Tuolumne River gushed out of the canyon and carved through the waterfall-fed meadows of Hetch Hetchy Valley, a place he called "a grand landscape garden, one of Nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples."

Today, the river disappears into the placid expanse of an artificial lake – water storage for San Francisco and its suburban customers.

Although Congress created Yosemite National Park in 1890, including Hetch Hetchy, another act of Congress authorized the damming of the national park’s Tuolumne River. In 1913, after ten years of fierce national debate, the Raker Act was passed to provide water and power for San Francisco, a city ravaged by an earthquake and fires in 1906. For San Francisco, the pure Sierra water would allow economic growth. But for Muir and other Hetch Hetchy advocates, a flooded valley behind a massive concrete dam would be a tragic despoliation of wilderness.

John Muir lost his fight nearly 90 years ago, but Ron Good, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy, believes that the first major battle over American wilderness is not over.

The mission of Restore Hetch Hetchy, an organization co-founded by David Brower in 1999, is to enlist nationwide support to restore the valley to its original glory. Releasing the water will reveal a dark bathtub ring and a dusty basin covered with thousands of tree stumps. But a National Park Service study prepared in the late 1980s suggested that restoration of the valley is viable. The original river channel likely still exists, animals and vegetation will come back, and eventually the bathtub ring will disappear. Some recovery will be apparent within two years, while other growth will take several decades.

But San Francisco has not been enthusiastic about diverting its main water storage for the Sierra water to restore the ancient glacial valley.

P.J. Johnston, spokesperson for San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, thinks the restoration proposal is unrealistic. "In the imagination of most liberal people, certain environmentalists, people who love Yosemite, it sounds like a wonderful dream. But not a single Congressperson has carried the measure forward. I think if the question were posed: Should we dam Hetch Hetchy now? I think most would say no," says Johnston. "But that was the 20th century. We are now in the 21st century and millions of people rely on this water."

But the question still remains: Can Hetch Hetchy Valley be restored while meeting the needs of the water users in San Francisco and other Bay Area communities who have come to depend on it? "We want to ask the question 'why not do this?'" says Good.

As a lobbyist for the Sierra Club in the late 1980s, Good became involved with the Hetch Hetchy issue when former Interior Secretary Don Hodel made a shocking proposal to dismantle the O’Shaughnessy Dam. Environmental leaders met with Hodel and his staff in Yosemite to talk over the possibilities. They encouraged him to commission an initial study that would be a "win" for Yosemite National Park and a "win" for San Francisco water and power users. Today, the Bureau of Reclamation study is collecting dust on bureaucrats' shelves, but restoration proponents believe that the "win-win" alternatives in the preliminary report warrant further investigation.

Restore Hetch Hetchy, Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Earth Island Institute, and the Planning and Conservation League have been urging San Francisco officials to help support an independent feasibility study to demonstrate environmentally sound ways to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley and meet Bay Area water and power needs.

With San Francisco facing a multi-billion dollar renovation of the Hetch Hetchy water system between Yosemite and the Bay Area, in the eyes of restoration proponents, this is also a good time to analyze alternatives to storing water in the national park.

San Francisco’s poor stewardship of its aging water infrastructure has brought the 156-mile system to the point where a major rebuild is needed. Now, some say that the system is vulnerable to catastrophic failure. The city avows that it needs $3.6 billion to repair, upgrade and expand the pipes, aqueducts and Bay Area reservoirs.

To pay for the city’s share of the overhaul and expansion of the Hetch Hetchy water system, on November 5, San Francisco will ask voters to authorize Proposition A, a $1.6 billion water bond – the largest municipal bond in the city’s history. The remaining $2 billion will come from suburban Bay Area customers.

Restore Hetch Hetchy and other restoration proponents warned the city that they would campaign against a water bond measure on the November ballot if a commitment for a study were not made by late August.

According to P.J. Johnston, Mayor Willie Brown does not oppose a restoration feasibility study. Still, Johnston says that opposition to the water bond measure is "counterproductive."

Though the Sierra Club focuses on the suburban sprawl potential that they say Proposition A will bring, the 110-year-old group founded in the Bay Area condemns the dam in Yosemite. John Rizzo, spokesperson for the Sierra Club Bay Area Chapter, says restoration "will be put off for decades," if the bond passes.

But Ron Good is more optimistic. "Whatever happens in November will not derail us," he says.

At least for now, public support for the activists seems to be growing. The controversy over Yosemite Valley’s "lesser-known twin" is gaining national attention again with a recent article and editorial by the New York Times and interest by PBS filmmaker Ken Burns.

The New York Times editorial suggested "…the least we can do is endorse a feasibility study. It may well lead to something remarkable."