Stirring Up Troubled Waters

San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein is understandably upset over Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel’s brainstorm of draining Hetchy Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park, tearing down O’Shaughnessy Dam and allowing the valley to return to its natural state. But her reaction to Hodel’s idea escalated to near-hysteria last week when the mayor made her very first visit to Hetch Hetchy and declared: “I think the dam is beautiful. It fits right in its setting.” That’s fine, perhaps, if one believes that a magnificent mountain valley is rendered beautiful by being flooded.

The mayor also exaggerates grossly when she claims that it would cost $6 billion to replace the water and power facilities that the city operates in the national park in the Sierra. Some of the other works still could be used for San Francisco water and power generation. The city would not lose its water, and in fact could store much of it downstream on the Tuolumne River in the Don Pedro Reservoir--a share of which the city owns.

The whole idea, of course, could not and will not be set in motion this year or next, but it certainly is worth debating. As the Times’ Dan Morain and Imbert Matthee reported over the weekend, the project is feasible physically. There is legal foundation for it in the public-trust doctrine of water use as outlined in the Mono Lake case by the California Supreme Court.

There is no question that Hetch Hetchy is a wonderful system, an engineering marvel. But much of the Hetchy Hetchy power is sold to the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts, not used in San Francisco. And much of the water is used not in San Francisco but in adjoining communities. There are alternative sources of power, including considerable surplus federal power in the Pacific Northwest.

Los Angeles, of course, has suffered criticism for generations for the devious way in which it got Owens Valley water. But in recent years the city’s Department of Water and Power has entered into agreements with Inyo County to limit water exports and to repair environmental damage. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has pledged protection for Mono Lake from city water diversions, even though it means that the city will have to get replacement water elsewhere.

Few would claim that the City of Los Angeles enhanced the Owens Valley environment by taking its water 75 years ago. Feinstein insists, though, that Hetch Hetchy is better off flooded than not. In an article in The Times on Sunday she coined this masterpiece of environmental non sequitur: “The splendor of the Hetch Hetchy wilderness remains wonderfully preserved--the works of man only minimally intrusive and the valley open to the public.” So the valley had to be drowned to save it?

The engineering efficiency of the Hetch Hetchy project is indisputable, but no public-works project is for forever, or irreplaceable. Restoration ofthe valley deserves reasoned study and analysis. This is, after all, an industrial project in the heart of one of the nation’s most revered national parks--a monument to perfidy. The idea is too compelling and visionary to be willed away by overheated protestations from San Francisco’s city hall.