Yosemite Blog

Category: Restore Hetch Hetchy

  • SF Halts Water Flow from Hetch Hetchy

    O’Shaughnessy Dam releases water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Photo by Inklein. San Francisco is high and dry as the SFPUC cut water delivery from Hetch Hetchy for at least a month. The shutdown is part of a planned outage to allow for maintenance on the aging water delivery system and is expected to last until…

  • November Ballot Initiative Could Let Bay Area Water Users Voice View on Hetch Hetchy

    A Restore Hetch Hetchy booth outside a Whole Foods store in Noe Valley helps to make Bay Area citizens aware of Hetch Hetchy and gather signatures to get a new initiative on the November Ballot. Photo by Steve Rhodes. San Francisco residents could get the chance to vote on draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir if a…

  • Demolishing Hetch Hetchy Could Save California’s Salmon Population – or Not

    The Tuolumne River below Hetch Hetchy Dam. Photo by Jared Kelly. There’s a very interesting piece by columnist Bill McEwen in the Fresno Bee about the decline in salmon coming up California’s rivers and salmon might be the dams undoing. The Tuolumne, a tributary of the San Joaquin, is “the keystone” to bringing back California’s…

  • SF Drops Plan to Drain Tuolumne

    In a shallow victory for environmentalists and those of us who live along the Tuolumne, San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission has dropped plans to siphon off an additional 25 million gallons of water a day from the already flagging river. East Bay Express: “San Francisco’s plan to take an additional 25 million gallons of water…

  • I have the most

    I have the most awesome readers of any blogger. There was just a study that came out that said readers couldn’t figure out what comments were for or how to use them but you guys have figured it out no problem. I’d like to share with you a comment I got on one my posts…

  • Scripps Howard News Service

    SHNS: A new alliance of seven American Indian tribes on Thursday demanded a role in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, an idea under study by a team of state officials. Calling themselves the Tribal Forum of Indigenous Peoples, the group formed in April in response to growing public debate about the future of Hetch Hetchy. The…

  • Hetch Hetchy: Just Another Damn Getting Demolished

    Time: “To some, the O’Shaughnessy Dam is a monument to the skills of the Irish-American engineer who built it. Elegant is the word that Susan Leal, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, uses to describe the curved wedge of rock and concrete that soars 300 ft. above the floor of the Hetch…

  • Don’t tear down Yosemite’s dam / Drain the reservoir, you’ll get swamps and mosquitoes

    SF Gate: “A “Restore Hetch Hetchy” movement seeks to dismantle San Francisco’s O’Shaughnessy Dam and drain the reservoir it created north of Yosemite Valley. “Let the great granite walls and booming waterfalls speak for themselves, ” Restore’s director, Ron Good, wrote in a recent newsletter. But those walls and waterfalls do speak for themselves. They…

  • Talking About Hetch Hetchy

    Several thoughts on the whole Hetch Hetchy thing. Hetch Hetchy is almost 100 years old now. It was built at a time when there were no earthquake or building standards like today. Don Pedro holds more than enough water and generates quite a bit of electricity. The water wouldn’t also have to be pumped up…

  • Big Battle Over Hetch Hetchy Looming In The Near Future

    SF Gate: “The debate over the proposal to breach the Sierra’s O’Shaughnessy Dam, drain the reservoir behind it and restore Hetch Hetchy Valley to its former natural splendor is apt to intensify this summer with the release of a California Department of Water Resources study on the issue. But preliminary comments from the agency indicate…