Hetchy Assignment. Please ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS ASKED
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Hetch Hetchy Case Study Assignment
Background
Hetch Hetchy is a valley located in California that acts as a reservoir and water system in Yosemite National Park. The valley is produced by tall granite structures that reach a height of over 1800 feet and a width of up to a mile in some locations. El Capitan, which is well known to mountain climbers, can be found nearby the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Along the valley floor, 1200 acres of meadows can be found surrounded by pine trees. The water system of the valley is supplied by the Tuolumne River, Falls Creek, Tiltill Creek, Rancheria Creek, and many other small streams that form a watershed of almost 460 square miles. Some of the tallest waterfalls in North America can be found in the Hetch Hetchy Valley: Wapama Falls, which is 1700 feet and Tueeulala Falls, which is 840 feet. Many different types of plants and animals make this valley their home including oaks, pines, willows, alders, mule deer, black bears, bighorn sheep, and rainbow trout.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the 1850’s, this valley was used by Native Americans for over 6,000 years. Tribes such as the Miwok and Paiute had settlements in this area and also hunted there during warmer summer months. These indigenous people were especially interested in the meadow plants they could collect in this area that were unavailable to them in other parts of the country. They even performed controlled burns that prevented the valley from being taken over by forest. When the first white people arrived in the 19th century, they did not realize that the valley was a product of thousands of years of land management carried out by Native Americans.
During the early 1850s, the first non-native American traveled to the valley, a man named Nathan Screech. He observed tension and anger between the Miwok and Paiute tribes as they competed for meadow plants in the valley. The first trail was blazed in 1853 by Nathan Screech’s brother, Joseph Screech. It was during this time that many prospectors visited the area during the California Gold Rush. Eventually, the Native Americans were driven out by European settlers so livestock could graze the valley floors. In 1864, Yosemite became a portion of the state park. Hetch Hetchy was ignored at that time because the meadows were being overgrazed by livestock. Naturalist and mountaineer, John Muir advocated for protection of the valley as part of a single state park associated with Yosemite. Muir’s advocacy, along with others, helped to get Yosemite designated as a National Park in 1890. However, this still did not include the Hetch Hetchy Valley due to arguments between the state and private land-owners around the valley region.
The first survey of the valley was conducted in 1867 by Charles F. Hoffman who worked for the California Geological Survey. Hoffman noticed the meadow and abundance of ponderosa and gray pines. The valley had not yet become a popular tourist spot because it was still difficult to reach and in the summer, there were swarms of mosquitoes. However, legends of its beauty were becoming well-known. Famous landscape artists including William Keith, Charles Dorman Robinson, and Albert Bierstadt were attracted to the area. Once their paintings became popular, tourism to the valley started to increase.
The Start of the Controversy
Hetch Hetchy Valley was considered to a beautiful and life supporting areas for the Native Americans. The beauty was not lost on the Europeans and subsequent settlers to the area either. It was often visited and eventually became sought after for its water supply to nearby towns and for farming purposes as early as the 1850s. During the 1880s, San Francisco started to explore the option of using water from the valley to help update their water system. The city tried several times to procure the water rights to Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1901, 1903, and again in 1905. San Francisco was unable to secure water rights each time because there were conflicts between the water rights on the Tuolumne River (which was now under national park status) and the surrounding irrigation districts.
The Dam Issue
There was a major earthquake that occurred in San Francisco in 1906. The earthquake’s aftermath caused terrible fires that ripped through the city. With the fires burning, the city applied for the rights to gain water access to the Hetch Hetchy through the United States Department of the Interior. James R. Garfield, who was the Secretary of the Interior, granted the San Francisco water rights to the Tuolumne River in 1908. This started a seven year battle between the Sierra Club, which had been founded by John Muir, and the United States government. Supporters of the city argued that Hetch Hetchy was the perfect natural reservoir for water storage needed, it didn’t have any development, and was the ideal placement for a dam that would create a lake used for municipal and irrigation purposes. The Sierra Club thought the lake would produce a ring around the perimeter that would be very visible when lake levels dropped if the dam was constructed. They also argued that the area needed to be protected as part of the National Park system so it could remain pristine for generations to enjoy and visit.
Hetch Hetchy Valley was located close enough to Yosemite National Park that if any significant plans for development were to occur, then an act of Congress was needed for the project to move ahead. President Woodrow Wilson and the United States Congress passed the Raker Act of 1913 that allowed the valley to be flooded in order to use water from the river for public interests only. San Francisco would not keep their end of this deal and began to sell hydropower from the dam that was constructed to Pacific Gas and Electric. This issue wouldn’t be settled for many years to come.
The Hetch Hetchy Project began in 1914. A railroad was constructed that linked Hetch Hetchy Valley to the Sierra Railway, a total of 68 miles. The railroad made it possible for the shipment of materials used in construction to be delivered from San Francisco to the construction site for the dam. The dam was named the O’Shaughnessy Dam and its construction began in 1919. The dam was completed in 1923 on the Tuolumne River. It flooded the entire valley of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. It was originally built to a height of 227 feet. The height was raised to 312 feet in 1938. Interestingly, twenty years after the construction started on the dam, the city of San Francisco finally received the first water from Hetch Hetchy in 1934, located 167 miles away from the Hetch Hetchy Valley.
The first powerhouse located at the dam site started commercial operation in 1918. The second powerhouse began commercial operation in 1925, which was replaced in 1960 at which time the first powerhouse was no longer used. A third powerhouse was added in 1988. Today, the water supplied from this reservoir is delivered to the San Francisco Bay area. The entire valley is flooded at an average depth of 300 feet behind the dam.
Present Day Hetch Hetchy
The Hetch Hetchy Project, along with several other dams, aqueducts, and hydroelectric plants, supplies water to 2.6 million people (or about 80% of their water supply). San Francisco is required to pay $30,000 a year in a lease in order to use Hetch Hetchy because it is located on federal land. The O’Shaughnessy Dam is currently 910 feet long and contains 675,000 cubic yards of concrete. The hydroelectric system of the Hetch Hetchy Project creates 1.7 billion kilowatt hours per year. To put that into a usage perspective, that amount of energy can provide 20% of the electricity needs to San Francisco. Water from this system is known to be some of the purest and cleanest in the entire country. In fact, it is so clean that San Francisco is one of only six cities in the United States that doesn’t require the tap water to be filtered by law.
So What Now?
Even after all these years, the Hetch Hetchy Project is still of major concern and discussion. This project represents one of the first major environmental issues that occurred in the United States and is still being debating today. Why is that and why should we care about this topic? The short answer is because there is no easy solution and the effects/ramifications of this particular project have been long lasting with no resolution being met after 100 years. Understanding issues such as these makes us able to examine current environmental issues and make far more informed decisions regarding short term and long terms consequences of our actions now in order to avoid a similar situation as to that of Hetch Hetchy.
Today there are people on both sides of fence regarding their support or not of the Hetch Hetchy Project. People who would like to see the dam and reservoir restored want this to happen so that Hetch Hetchy Valley may be returned to its former glory. Those in favor of this action point out that San Francisco has violated the Raker Act of 1913 stating that the dam was to be used only for power and water and not for private interests. Currently a private company, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company sells the energy generated from this project to the Bay Area. The controversial Secretary of the Interior in the 1930s under President Franklin Roosevelt, Harold Ickes said that San Francisco was violating the Raker Act. Ickes and the city of San Francisco reached an agreement in 1945.
Environmental organizations such as Restore Hetch Hetchy and the Sierra Club would like to see the project drained so that the valley can be restored to its original state and enjoyed as a recreational area as it borders Yosemite National Park. The restoration of the valley could take decades. In 1987, the National Park Service carried out a study examining the effects of removing the dam under the orders of the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, Don Hodel during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The National Park Service reported that they believed that grasses would cover the valley floor if the dam was drained within two years and trees would return within ten years. After 50 years, vegetation would cover everything with the exception of rocky areas. Through land management, the National Park Service also concluded that the valley could most likely be restored to the way it was before construction took place at the site.
As for the removal of the dam, in order to avoid huge demolition costs and potentially dangerous environmental consequences from such operations, it has been proposed to remove a hold at the base of the dam so it would drain and return natural flow to the Tuolumne River. Most of the dam would actually remain and to serve as a monument to the memory of all who were involved in its construction over the years. Currently, there is another dam along the Tuolumne River called the New Don Pedro Dam found lower in the basin. Water storage that occurs in Hetch Hetchy could go to this dam instead through the use of diversion dams that can provide power on a seasonal basis. The New Don Pedro Dam could then be enlarged to accommodate more water and also to increase the power that is produced at this particular site, while still supplying the San Francisco Bay area with its water supply.
On the other side of the fence are those who are against the removal of the dam. The main argument against the removal of the dam is that these people are concerned about where the water would then come from if the Hetch Hetchy Valley was restored. It is argued that if the O’Shaughnessy Dam was removed or altered then the powerhouses would only be able to produce energy seasonally as water levels increased naturally. They argue that this would only be a fraction of the amount of power generated that would be needed based on current levels being utilized. In order to meet the gap in energy demands, fossil fuels would be needed which would generate pollution. It is believed that it would cost $3 to 10 billion to remove the dam and transport the materials away from the site. Additionally, many are concerned that their clean water from Hetch Hetchy would be replaced with water from aqueducts that needs filtration at high costs.
Regardless of the argument for or against restoration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, politics has been a motivating factor. The Sierra Club accused Don Hodel in the 1980s of trying to cause problems within area environmental organizations so they would be in conflict with each other by proposing the study that was carried out by the National Park Service. In 1987, Dianne Feinstein was the major of San Francisco. She would go onto to become a top ranking Senator of California representing the Democratic Party. Feinstein remained strongly opposed to the restoration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, while Don Hodel (Secretary of the Department of the Interior under republican President Reagan) was strongly in support of its restoration. The tension didn’t end there. In 2007, President Bush allocated $7 million in the National Park Service budget to study the possible effects that removing the dam might have. Feinstein was greatly opposed to this idea and thought that funding for it was unnecessary because the dam didn’t need to be removed under any circumstances. More recently in November of 2012, the people of San Francisco voted against a bill called Proposition F that would have used $8 million to study what might happen if the valley was restored by having the dam removed. The study would have also examined possible replacements for the Bay Area water supply and hydroelectric power usages.
