In light of this week's Hetch Hetchy "Dam"age, maybe some folks will reconsider restoring this natural park and storing water elsewhere.
The last time the demolition idea was proposed, it came not from wild-eyed environmentalists, but from President Ronald Reagan's interior secretary.
Although it is likely that Donald Hodel was trying to polish the Reagan administration's poor environmental image, the preliminary study he ordered found the idea intriguing.
The study found that if the dam were demolished, Hetch Hetchy's 360,000 acre-feet of water could be stored in several places, including Los Vaqueros Reservoir in eastern Contra Costa County, then in its planning stages.
"Initially startling, this idea, on second consideration, begins to intrigue the mind and free the imagination to consider the creative potential of such a proposal," the 1988 study said.
"Could the city of San Francisco receive a comparable water and power supply from other sources? Could the Hetch Hetchy Valley be restored as part of the living heritage of our national park system? In a world of diminishing natural resources, what is the highest use of the valley? These questions are worth asking."
Those questions are sure to meet with skeptical responses along the Peninsula and in Silicon Valley.
When she was mayor of San Francisco, Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the Los Angeles Times in 1987: "All this is for an expanded campground? ... It's dumb, dumb, dumb."
Feinstein, D-Calif., was equally skeptical, but comparatively muted recently.
"Throughout California, there are communities searching for high-quality drinking water. We have it, and we must keep it," she said |
