The enduring discussion over what value we place on beautiful places dams cover up or create, given the water lost or gained, is a good one, and applies as well to Auburn Dam; which we feel clearly comes down on the side of building the dam, protecting Sacramento from flooding, stabilizing the river flow through the Parkway, thus protecting its integrity; and the created beauty of a new mountain lake trumps the objections being raised.
But that’s why it’s called discussion and we should continue to have it until all of the facts are out, the interests have spoken, the costs weighed and the public decides, for Auburn and Hetch Hetchy.
An excerpt.
Dan Walters: Hetch Hetchy report merely sets stage for long political fight
By Dan Walters -- Bee ColumnistPublished 12:01 am PDT Friday, July 21, 2006
State water officials Wednesday released an overview of removing a nearly century-old dam from the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, and within minutes two reactive statements were e-mailed to journalists.
A coalition of environmental groups that want to demolish the dam and restore the now-underwater valley to its natural state quickly seized upon the Department of Water Resources' findings, saying they "confirm … it is feasible to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park."
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, however, just as quickly declared that the report "confirms that dismantling O'Shaughnessy Dam and draining the Hetch Hetchy reservoir are unwarranted and the cost is indefensible."
The mutually exclusive responses reflect not only the polarization of the issue, which has been kicking around in one form or another for decades, but also its many ironies.
Feinstein is a former mayor of San Francisco, and Hetch Hetchy is a major source of water for San Francisco and other Bay Area communities.
Her stiff opposition is almost universally shared among Bay Area civic and political leaders who relish having an exclusive water source protected from the uncertainties of being part of a larger system, as are most local supplies.
Feinstein terms Hetch Hetchy "a truly remarkable system which provides high-quality, reliable drinking water to 2.4 million residents in the San Francisco Bay Area."
San Francisco's tapping Hetch Hetchy's Tuolumne River during the early 20th century was an exercise in pure power politics -- the equivalent of how Los Angeles secured its water supply from the Owens Valley during the same period. But while Los Angeles has been excoriated mightily for its highhanded tactics in the Owens Valley, San Francisco has, for some reason, largely escaped criticism for jamming Hetch Hetchy through Congress.
It's doubly ironic since the Bay Area contains the state's -- and perhaps the nation's -- largest concentration of environmental activists who adamantly oppose new water projects such as an Auburn dam. And the irony is compounded further by Hetch Hetchy's natural beauty, often equated with its larger cousin, the Yosemite Valley -- an honor that the Owens Valley could never claim. In the macro sense, therefore, the Bay Area's defense of maintaining the Hetch Hetchy system drips with a kind of "we've got ours, so to heck with everyone else" attitude.
