Shame of the City

With the assistance of Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), the city of San Francisco is stonewalling legislation that would bar it from attempting to enlarge O’Shaughnessy Dam or the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park without Congressional approval. The shame of Hetch Hetchy lives on.

Wilson has echoed the city’s protests that it has no present plans to enlarge its water supply reservoir on the upper Tuolumne River and, thus, there is no urgency to pass the legislation sponsored by Rep. Richard H. Lehman (R-Sanger). Wilson, while contending that he is not judging the merits of the legislation, says the Senate should not act until city officials have had a chance to testify on the bill.

But the city has already had its say and Sen. Wilson should withdraw his objections to the legislation.

The bill passed the House on Sept. 16 without dissent, even from the House members representing San Francisco. The Reagan Administration supports it. The measure is so short and so simple--and so correct--that it should not need a second thought. The city had ample notice to testify personally before the House Interior Committee on this issue earlier this year. The city chose merely to submit written testimony, much of it objecting to provisions of the bill that since have been dropped.

The city argues that authority over Hetch Hetchy should remain with the secretary of the interior. But the secretary’s assistant for water issues has written, “The United States Congress, not the Department of the Interior, is the proper forum for this debate.”

San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein wrote Congress this summer: “The present arrangements have served the national interest in Yosemite National Park and the people of the Bay Area well over half a century, and there is no reason to drastically change them now.”

Perhaps the present arrangements have been fine for the city treasury, which makes money from the power and water generated by the project. But it has not been so fine for the magnificent Hetch Hetchy Valley, for which John Muir fought so valiantly and vainly early this century. The foolish notion of flooding the valley even deeper is abhorrent and certainly should not even be contemplated without Congress’ weighing of the clear national interest involved.

If and when that day ever should come, San Francisco will have ample opportunity to make its case, and most likely be ridiculed from one end of the land to the other.