Here’s a very interesting story from the LA Times. Novelist Greg Sarris imagines what it would be like after the water is drained and Hetch Hetchy is restored.
LA Times: “The massive lake shinks; 360,000 acre feet of impounded water begins to disappear.
Stumps from giant oaks felled nearly a hundred years ago appear beneath the surface like shadows. What spirits rise?
Big news: After years of maneuvering, Congress authorizes the restoration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Pomp and circumstance, a formal ceremony will take place in four months on Dec. 19, the 100th anniversary of the Raker Act, which allowed San Francisco to build the O’Shaughnessy Dam and flood the valley. But already restoration has begun; the water is receding. The granite cliffs grow taller.
I am perched on a large boulder below Wapama Falls — a mere mossy dribble on this August day — and in the shade of a madrone. Noontime. My company: a scraggly pine on the cliff above, a stoic observer; and, flitting branch to branch in a nearby oak, a blue-tailed scrub jay breaking the warm stillness with a periodic squawk.”