Hodel, Feinstein Square Off Over Plan to Dismantle Dam

As debates go, it might not have ranked among the best of all time. But few debates have ever had a more majestic backdrop for photo opportunities.

Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel, standing atop the dam that holds most of San Francisco’s water, told the city’s mayor, Dianne Feinstein, on Tuesday that he remained intent on studying the dismantling of 420-foot-high O’Shaughnessy Dam and creating another valley for campers in the heavily used national park.

Feinstein, the most vehement critic of Hodel’s suggestion that Hetch Hetchy Valley be restored to its natural state, had invited Hodel to tour the system and see for himself that his idea was, as she has said, the worst idea to come from the Reagan Administration since the arms sales to Iran.

Feinstein, a bit ill with a cold, was unable to accompany Hodel during a helicopter flight over the massive system of aqueducts, dams, electrical power plants and reservoirs. But not about to miss a chance to have her side told, she arrived at Hetch Hetchy on her own flight.

“I don’t know that we’re ever going to please somebody who seems so ideologically bound,” Feinstein said, before the Cabinet secretary arrived.

When Hodel did arrive, he greeted her by asking how she felt. “So-so,” Feinstein replied, “but when I get into a fight, my adrenaline comes back.”

Feinstein called the High Sierra water the purest urban water supply in the nation and said that any move to demolish any part of the system in favor of more campgrounds is a “very bad trade-off,” particularly in a state that is trying to find new sources of water. Later, Hodel was treated to a discussion of California’s complex water system by 20 water experts, elected officials and environmentalists at a nearby lodge.

Both officials--he wearing cowboy boots and blue jeans, she wearing a stylish Burgundy-colored dress--endured a serenade by a contingent of the radical environmentalist group Earth First. Hodel was presented with a gold-colored monkey wrench for his suggestion that the system be dismantled.

Environmentalists, among them Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, lauded Hodel’s idea of restoring the valley and said it could be the first of many efforts to undo environmentally damaging projects of past generations.

“It’s an idea whose time has come,” Hodel said. He added, however, that he would propose no other restoration projects during his tenure. He did say that he will make a recommendation about whether to proceed with Hetch Hetchy’s restoration before the end of the Reagan Administration. In the meantime, Hodel has directed his staff to find replacement sources of water and power.

Hodel’s suggestion, made public in August, rekindled one of the most bitter environmental debates of the 20th Century, one that seemingly ended in 1913 when Congress passed legislation allowing San Francisco to dam the Tuolumne River at the Hetch Hetchy Valley. The dam, completed in 1923, remains the only dam of any significance in any national park.

“There are no insurmountable problems” to demolishing the dam and restoring the valley, Hodel said several times during the day.

“I’ve got to differ,” Feinstein said, listing an array of problems, not the least of which would be replacing water for 2 million customers in the Bay Area who depend on the Hetch Hetchy system, plus scores of cities and companies that use hydroelectric power it generates.

“If $2 billion to $3 billion is not a serious cost objection, I don’t know what is,” Feinstein said, citing one of the city’s estimates of the cost of replacing the system.

No Bug Spray Then

As Feinstein led Hodel across O’Shaughnessy Dam, she told him that the reservoir is small and that if it were emptied, the valley would be only slightly more than one mile square, hardly the size of the 4,400-acre Yosemite Valley. The valley floor, she said, referring to statements made to Congress before the dam was built, would be unusable because it would be a swampy marsh, overpopulated with hungry mosquitoes.

The Interior secretary quipped that insect repellent was not available in those days.

Hodel got off a few other digs, most of which had to do with the profit the city makes from the sale of Hetch Hetchy power and water. In the fiscal year ended in July, the city made a $49-million profit from the sale of power alone.

Noting that Feinstein declared that San Francisco officials would fight a federal government attempt to “take over” the system, Hodel said: “It looks to me like the takeover she ought to be worried about is from Boone Pickens. This is better than oil wells.”

Hodel scoffed at Feinstein’s statement that Hetch Hetchy is a “birthright” of San Franciscans and declared: “Yosemite National Park is America’s birthright, not any individual city’s.”

The secretary’s day began early in the morning in Sacramento, where he met with water experts, elected officials and environmentalists, including David Brower, who invoked the memory of John Muir in calling for the dam’s destruction. Muir led the fight in 1913 to save the valley, and Brower said the loss on the matter “probably killed” Muir, who died the following year.

No Challenges

“Does anybody around the table here today think we would seriously consider building a dam in Yosemite National Park now?” Hodel asked the Sacramento gathering.

But while nobody in the crowd dared to take up the challenge, several people talked about the problems attendant in tearing down the dam that does exist. A representative of river rafters said the Tuolumne without the dam would radically change white water runs. A spokesman for trout fishermen said fisheries would be altered. One Northern California official said the plan would simply help pave the way for Southern California to grab more Northern California water, a suggestion quickly rebuffed by Richard Atwater of the Metropolitan Water District.