Draining Hetch Hetchy: The Blogosphere Weighs In. You Can Too.
By Tom Chandler on Feb 10, 2007 in Environment, Opinion
Should we drain Hetch-Hetchy?
For those who don’t know, it’s a valley that reportedly surpasses Yosemite in grandeur (which is saying a lot), yet - after a fierce battle led by John Muir - was flooded in 1923 to provide drinking water to San Francisco.
Prior to flooding. Spectacular, eh?
Hardly anyone knew Hetch Hetchy Valley. It was one of the most beautiful valleys in the world. Handsome cliffs and waterfalls in a charming setting. Trees to frame the vistas, meadows to look at and to look from, natural beauty under foot and to walk by - a setting with open space, living space, that a million people might see and enjoy every year. It was very much like the Yosemite Valley the world knows today, just a few miles to the south.
There’s been a movement afoot to drain it and let nature restore the valley, and the administration’s latest budget even allots $7 million to study the project (I have my suspicions about the sincerity of that appropriation, but I digress).
The Getoutdoors.com Outdoor Blog stumbled onto a pair of my favorite outdoor bloggers disagreeing, and - in a move I can only approve of - tried to whip up a little rivalry between Dan Mitchell and Tom Mangan.
That’s what I like to see. Friends going at it, albeit in a gentlemanly manner sadly, on the topic of draining the Hetch Hetchy. It’s back in the news after Bush allocated $7M in the new budget to studying the matter. Tom says don’t drain it in a rare foray into political blogging, Dan says drain it.
I say drain the damned thing, but then I live in an area where we actually experience the consequences of doomed social artifacts like water-gobbling urban areas that can’t support themselves, bluegrass lawns in the desert and rice farming in semi-arid regions.
I say it’s time we stopped consuming every natural resource like it’s infinite, and started living like the intelligent species we contend we are.
But that’s just me. Maybe I’m a little crazy.
The Sierra Club suggests that water could be easily collected downstream of Hetch Hetchy (there are several reservoirs).
The restoration plan would not “lose” the resource, or require “another clean source of water.” The plan envisions simply collecting and storing the very same water somewhere downslope from Yosemite National Park in the high Sierra. Restoration would not only re-open the magnificent Hetch Hetchy Valley, but help reduce the chronic overcrowding that plagues its Yosemite Valley neighbor.
Will it happen? I have some doubts. Still, the only causes worth fighting for are the lost ones.
So do we see Hetch Hetchy again? Or cultivate an appreciation for flatwater?
Technorati Tags: hetch hetchy, getoutdoors, yosemite, sierra club, san francisco, john muir
isaac | Feb 10, 2007 | Reply
Bring them all down. Let the rivers flow sgsin. Mother Nature and future generations would bebefit greatly. let the Mother determine how much water is going to flow during the year,then deal with AG losses, and some might actually have to hunt and garden for their food. Then they might actually care about what is going on in the environment. bring down shasta, its just holding a giant cesspool. let the anadromous fish run again, couldn,t really hurt anything. Just those greenback chumps who never really learned that any action is followed by an equal and opposite reaction.
Dan | Feb 10, 2007 | Reply
I learned of Hetch-Hetchy while taking an Environmental Ethics course in college. It makes you wish you could go back in time and roam the west prior to man’s changing it. Imagine seeing thousands of Chinook Salmon teaming in Redfish lake…
It’s those damn dams!
Jim Webb | Feb 10, 2007 | Reply
Yeah. I gotta weigh in on this one. Several years after I came to California in 1970, I became known as “Yosemite Jim” because I spent a substantial amount of time in the backcountry, out of the Disneyland that had become the valley. But I never saw the Hetch Hetchy. Perhaps that was purposeful on my part. It should be drained, the damn torn down. I will not live long enough to see the valley restored to its original condition, even if it were torn down today, but it should go.
I’m not in favor of tearing down every dam, despite the assertion of Newton’s third law in the previous post. That law would apply to tearing down the dam, as well; and I’m not sure I want a country with no source of hydroelectric power. But San Francisco is the only city in the U.S. that gets its water from inside the boundaries of a national park. That’s not what the parks are there for.
John Muir was right, even though I’m not a member of the Sierra Club. The dam never should have been erected, and it should come down as soon as possible.
On a related note, cars, or at least privately owned vehicles should be banned from the Valley. Have you ever stood in the high country on a summer day, and gazed at the smog floating over the Valley? Quite a sight. A good start would be to reduce the number of campsites available to cars. If the beauty and granduer that is Yosemite is to be preserved, and appreciated, creating a Disneyland in the Valley is not the way to do it.
Finally, are you aware that there are a significant number of private residences in Yosemite? I’m not talking about the ranger residences in the Valley. Between Wawona and Badger Pass there is a development of approximately 50-75 fairly new houses (my estimate is that they are 25-45 years old). If you are really interested in this, you should get a copy of the Yosemite master plan, and give ‘em your input.
So, while we wonder about one aspect of Yosemite, the Hetch Hetchy Resevoir, there are other things that seriously threaten the wonder that is Yosemite. The dam won’t come down until there is a concerted effort by a real political constituency to take back the park, and restore it to what it was, and can be again.
John Hughes | Feb 11, 2007 | Reply
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