benefits of hetch hetchy dam

It pitted Gifford Pinchot, Americas first forester, against John Muir, Americas legendary conservationist. In this unmanaged scenario, where nature is left to take hold in the valley, eventually a forest would grow, rather than the meadow being restored. This time it was in favor those who wanted to preserve the valley for generations yet to come. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed Lane his Secretary of the Interior. Although Hetch Hetchy is included within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park, the entrance is separate from the rest of the park. [24] Screech reported that the valley was bitterly disputed between the "Pah Utah Indians" (Paiute) and "Big Creek Indians" (Miwok), and witnessed several fights in which the Paiute appeared to be the dominant tribe. For instance, the WET company helps people see the beauty of water through magnificent water fountains. Hydroelectric power generated from the Hetch Hetchy project is largely sold to Bay Area customers through a private power company, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). [73] Furthermore, the removal of O'Shaughnessy Dam would not require costly sediment control measures, as would be typical on most dam removal projects, because of the high quality of the Tuolumne River water in the first 90 years since its construction, only around 2in (5.1cm) of sediment had been deposited in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, much less than most other dams. Muir famously said, Dam Hetch Hetchy! Gifford Pinchot wanted the U.S Forest Service to control the parks, but after his support to dam Hetchy Hetchy, Congress voted in 1916 to to establish the National Park Service whose sole purpose was "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the . These clean and comfortable rooms also enjoy access to the pool, spa and other facilities at Yosemite Westgate Lodge. [69], In 1987, the idea of razing the O'Shaughnessy Dam gained an adherent in Don Hodel, Secretary of the Department of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan. It marks the first catchment in a 160-mile long water system that brings high quality, superb-tasting water to 2.6 million residents of the Bay Area every day. [5] The valley was slowly becoming known for its natural beauty, but it was never a popular tourist destination because of extremely poor access and the location of the famous Yosemite Valley just twenty miles to the south. [77][78], The economic wisdom of removing the dam has been frequently questioned. Those who presumed to speak for wealth, much of which flowed to San Francisco, believed they were transforming a pioneer land into a settled, civilized one. Due to extreme winter weather, Yosemite National Park is closed with no estimated date of reopening. "[22], The valley's name may be derived from a Miwok word earlier anglicized as hatchhatchie, which means "edible grasses"[8][23] or "magpie". The SFPUC and other Hetch Hetchy users are currently implementing plans to meet this demand through recycled water, groundwater and conservation. . The Hetch Hetchy Valley is about 8 miles (13 km) from Yosemite Valley. Secretary of the Interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, refused to give San Francisco a permit to build the dam. [5], The valley is fed by the Tuolumne River, Falls Creek, Tiltill Creek, Rancheria Creek, and numerous smaller streams which collectively drain a watershed of 459sqmi (1,190km2). [66] In 2015, Restore Hetch Hetchy filed a complaint arguing that the construction of the dam had violated a provision in the constitution of California about water use, but the lawsuit was rejected by an appeals court and later the California State Supreme Court. Proponents of the dam replied that out of multiple sites considered by San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy had the "perfect architecture for a reservoir",[43] with pristine water, lack of development or private property, a steep-sided and flat-floored profile that would maximize the amount of water stored, and a narrow outlet ideal for placement of a dam. Now San Francisco wanted to dam one of the two principal watersheds in the park, the Hetch Hetchy valley through which ran the Tuolumne River, to create a reservoir for its water supply. Loss of the reservoir would decrease the Bay Areas water and energy security, requiring new water storage (possibly in reservoirs not owned by San Francisco) and the development of new water and energy supplies. [37][38] However, ranchers who had previously owned land in the new park continued their use of Hetch Hetchy Valley a "sheep-grazing free-for-all [that] threatened to denude the High Sierra meadows"[37] before disputes over state and private properties in respect to national park boundaries were finally settled in the early 1900s. This time, in favor of those who wanted to build the dam. Wapama Fall is reached via a five-mile, round-trip hike that follows the shoreline of the reservoir with moderate up and downhill hiking. The Poopenaut Trail begins at a signed trailhead four miles past the entrance station. What should be the fate of prairies, wetlands, or coastal marshes? Residents drink it in 26 cities and water districts from San. Shasta, Oroville, Hetch Hetchy and many others were built by damming large rivers. remains the least visited area of the park. Hoover Dam. San Francisco applied to the United States Department of the Interior to gain water rights to Hetch Hetchy, and in 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, James R. Garfield, granted San Francisco the rights to development of the Tuolumne River. When youre standing at the shore overlooking what appears to be a lake, picture yourself looking down into a verdant valley filled with the tall native grasses that give the valley its name. A) human well-being B) renewable energy C) environmental sustainability D) cultural services E) human population growth, The current total world population has just passed ________. Second, dams slow rivers. Principally, dam removal on the Klamath will require annual replacement of 696 gigawatt hours of electricity by other means. The Hetch Hetchy Valley was within Yosemite National Park and protected by the federal government, leaving it up to Congress to decide the valley's fate. Many examples of red-barked manzanita can be seen along the Hetch Hetchy Road. Today the 117-billion-gallon reservoir supplies drinking water to about 2.5 million San Francisco Bay Area residents and hydro-electric power generated by two plants downstream. There are thousands of dams in the United States. "[32], In 1867, Charles F. Hoffman of the California Geological Survey conducted the first survey of the valley. Congress, confronted with rising public opposition, refused to act on the measure. The reservoir provides water to a large portion of the Bay Area through a 160 mile delivery. It's dumb, dumb, dumb. The report cited other dam projects in making the argument that this project would increase tourism. The O'Shaughnessy Dam is 430-foot (131 m) high made of concrete and it is named after engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy, who oversaw the entire construction. It's a big job to open the tunnel and close it again. Here are just some of the hurdles we would need to cross: Identify water supplies to meet about 18 percent of the regions water demand in dry years (which occur about 20 percent of the time), Permit and build 40 to 90 megawatts of renewable power to supply almost all municipal demand in San Francisco, Build and operate a water-filtration plant, because water stored further downstream than Hetch Hetchy will have to be filtered, Engineer and design a series of expensive and complicated infrastructure projects to re-engineer major components of the regional water system, then get those changes through the environmental review process, Somehow convince senior water-right holders like the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts on the Tuolumne River to let us store our drinking water in their reservoirs. While John Muir led the fight against building the dam, the opposition was supported by Gifford Pinchot. John Muir, the first president of the Sierra Club, condemned plans to build the dam, saying, "Dam Hetch Hetchy! ", "Three Square Miles of Open Space: Is It Enough? It is the source of water for the city of San Francisco. As we all know, there is no use of water that is higher than the domestic use., He went on to say, We come straight to the question of whether the advantage of leaving this valley in a state of nature is greater than the advantage of using it for the benefit of the city of San Francisco.. If youre up for a driving adventure, try taking a little extra time to retrace parts of the route John Muir described in his book, My First Summer in the Sierra. Yes, the plan to drain Hetch Hetchy involves causing new ecological damage. The larger issues at stake would frame environmental debates for years to come. Browers Hetch Hetchy: Undoing A Great American Mistake, makes a compelling case for restoring the valley to its previous glory. Those in favor of dam removal have pointed out that many actions by San Francisco since 1913 have been in violation of the Raker Act, which explicitly stated that power and water from Hetch Hetchy could not be sold to private interests. The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir itself store 85% of the City's overall drinking water supply, the remaining 15% is stored in the system's 5 other reservoirs. Annie Li, a senior engineer at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, points to the yellow and brown squiggly lines on the map, revealing our water's path from Hetch Hetchy to the Bay Area. [50] The removal of the dam would be extremely costly, at least $310 billion,[76] and the transport of the demolished material away from the dam site along the narrow, winding Hetch Hetchy Road would be a logistical nightmare with possible environmental impacts. Those who did visit it were enchanted by its scenery, but encountered difficulties with the primitive conditions and, in summertime, swarms of mosquitoes. As a consequence, visitors came to experience it for themselves. Specialty pricing may require . Many are vital pieces of infrastructure that provide reliable water supplies, hydropower, flood control, and recreation. On December 19, 1913, Congress passed and President Wilson signed the Raker Act which permitted the building of the OShaughnessy Dam and the flooding of the Hetch Hethcy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Assign each group to analyze one or more . between those who wish to retain the dam and reservoir, and those who wish to drain the reservoir and return Hetch Hetchy Valley to its former state. As we learned from Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, humankind can damage the environment while attempting to control it. He discovered it a few of years later. Muir concludes his treatise on Hetch Hetchy with the now familiar words, "Dam Hetch Hetchy! (Read SPURs analysis of this plan.) [31] Its meadows provided abundant feed for "thousands of head of sheep and cattle that entered lean and lank in the spring, but left rolling fat and hardly able to negotiate the precipitous and difficult defiles out of the mountains in the fall. As Muir famously protested: Dam Hetch Hetchy? Hetch Hetchy, a glacially carved valley situated in the northern end of the park, was flooded and dammed in the early 1900s in order to serve as the primary drinking water source for parts of San Francisco and the Bay Area. San Francisco had its eyes on this water source early on and repeatedly tried to acquire water rights to the Tuolumne River. The idea of punching a hole in or removing the dam and allowing the valley to be restored to its pre-development conditions has been around since the late 1980s. Dam Hetch Hetchy! Visitors might still need chains to get down Evergreen Road this time of year, but a trip to Hetch Hetchy reveals an example of the potent storms, and a reservoir of controversy for 100 years. This is a place considered by John Muir to be equal in beauty to Yose. The Hetch Hetchy Valley is a part of Yosemite National Park. This is because the Tuolumne catchment basin above Hetch Hetchy is almost three times as large as the catchment area of the Merced River above Yosemite, allowing a greater volume of ice to form. "[65] Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior in the late 1930s, said there was a violation of the Raker Act, but he and the city reached an agreement in 1945. Hetch Hetchy is dammed by the 430-foot-tall OShaughnessy Dam and has a storage capacity of 360,360 acre-feet. The water winds between granite features like Kolana Rock and Hetch Hetchy Dome. For functional purposes, Hetch Hetchy was a promising solution to San Francisco's serious water shortages. The Tuolumne River, the source of. . The National Park Service conducted research to determine what would happen if the dam were removed, and people have repeatedly proposed costly studies to further understand the consequences of removing the dam. [41], In 1906, after a major earthquake and subsequent fire that devastated San Francisco, the inadequacy of the city's water system was made tragically clear. benefits of hetch hetchy dam. [67], Those in opposition of dam removal state that demolishing O'Shaughnessy Dam would take away a valuable source of clean, renewable hydroelectric power in the Kirkwood and Moccasin powerhouses; even if measures such as seasonal water diversion into the powerhouses were employed, it would only make up for a fraction of the original power production. [6][7], Upstream from the valley lies the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, while the smaller Poopenaut Valley is directly downstream from O'Shaughnessy Dam.