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Pastimes : Current Events and General Interest Bits & Pieces -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (33)	11/14/2002 2:52:57 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 603

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

To: Win Smith who wrote (33)	1/11/2003 4:08:14 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 603

In a First, U.S. Puts Limits on California's Thirst nytimes.com [ back on the California water front, as it were. The overallocation of Colorado River water to California is an old, old story, it's interesting to see it pop up in the news though. ] Three of the eight pumps that tap into the glistening reservoir of Colorado River water near here are sitting idle, by order of the federal government. With the pumps switched off since 8 a.m. New Year's Day, less water is churning down the 242-mile aqueduct toward coastal Southern California, where 17 million people rely on snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains for washing dishes, flushing toilets and watering lawns. Advertisement This is a pivotal moment in the contentious history of water in the arid West, which more often than not has pitted California's unquenchable thirst against that of its smaller but equally parched neighbors. For the first time since it was given the authority four decades ago, the United States Department of the Interior has said no to California's dipping into the Colorado River for more than its allotted share. . . . [ also on California and water, though not particularly related except in the general Chinatown sense ] California Report Supports Critics of Water Diversion nytimes.com