For Shame, San Francisco

The annals of Western water development teem with perfidy and connivance, but the Owens Valley will always enjoy a special aura of infamy. Mention the words water and theft in one breath, and someone will follow with Los Angeles and Owens Valley in the next. The legend sometimes is grander than the facts. Los Angeles at least paid for the water rights that it got from valley ranchers three-quarters of a century ago. Maybe not fair and square, but with real money.

The Owens Valley legacy shadows the Department of Water and Power everywhere. The city is constantly in the courts defending its eastern Sierra water rights. It has given up some water to environmental considerations, and faces the loss of more.

Rarely, however, is the City of San Francisco called on to defend, atone or repent for its own rapacious water venture of the early 20th Century into the heart of one of the nation’s most hallowed natural areas: Yosemite National Park. San Francisco did not just take the water from an arid ranching area. With Congress’ complicity in 1913, it dared to inundate Yosemite’s remarkable Hetch Hetchy Valley on the Tuolumne River. Unflooded and accessible, Hetch Hetchy would be treasured as one of the world’s great natural areas, a region of towering rock walls and dashing waterfalls. Now, behind a locked watergate, it is the forgotten Yosemite of America.

In his losing battle to save Hetch Hetchy, naturalist John Muir raged: “Dam Hetch Hetchy? As well dam for water tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated to the hearts of man.” Indeed, there are those who dream of breaching O’Shaughnessy Dam and allowing Nature to one day restore Hetch Hetchy to its former magnificence.

But there is no such talk around city hall in San Francisco. In fact, there are mumblings about building O’Shaughnessy Dam even higher and flooding Hetch Hetchy even deeper to bring even more water to the Bay Area and generate more electric power. Not right now, perhaps. But sometime. Imagine even thinking such a thing, particularly in San Francisco--the home of the Sierra Club, the proud Athens of the conservation movement and the hotbed of opposition to any export of surplus water from Northern California to the south.

This is not just a pipe dream of engineers. The mayor herself, Dianne Feinstein, has written Congress to protest a bill that would require congressional approval for the expansion of any public-works projects in national parks. The measure, by Rep. Richard H. Lehman (D-Sanger), makes specific reference to the Hetch Hetchy project.

In her letter the mayor said, “The only (her emphasis) economically feasible source for water for their future needs is the Hetch Hetchy system, utilizing water rights previously granted for this purpose.” The future needs are not San Francisco’s, but those of neighboring counties that receive water service from the city.

Feinstein added, “The present arrangements have served the national interest in Yosemite National Park and the people of the Bay Area well for half a century, and there is no reason to drastically change them now.”

Well, the system certainly has served San Francisco well. More than half its water is sold to San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties, and the city reaps considerable benefit from the electric power generated as the water courses from the Sierra. But there are alternatives to bringing more water directly to the Bay Area via the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct. For one, San Francisco could let the water flow naturally down the Tuolumne, now declared a wild and scenic river, and into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Then the city could take the water from the delta, as do most other major users in both Northern and Southern California.

But dam Hetch Hetchy even higher? For shame, San Francisco. Congress cannot atone for the infamy of 1913. But it can promptly pass the Lehman bill and therefore be certain that the infamy is not compounded.