Owned by San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite
National Park provides water to nearly 3 million people in 29
cities across the San Francisco Bay Area. The water, provided by
snowmelt via the Tuolumne River, does not require filtration.
Stored in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir behind O’Shaughnessy Dam, the
water is delivered by a gravity based system and aqueduct to the
Bay Area.
Hetch Hetchy has generated controversy since it was first
proposed as a source of water following the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake. Congress also had to approve the project because it
was located in a national park. John Muir and the Sierra Club
unsuccessfully fought the reservoir’s establishment since it
required flooding a scenic mountain valley. After its
construction in the 1920s, various groups have lobbied to restore
the Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural state.
Turlock Irrigation District’s board of directors voted
unanimously Tuesday to move toward a voluntary agreement that
would supersede flow requirements within the Bay-Delta Water
Quality Control Plan. That plan was first adopted in
2018, but the flow requirements never have been implemented.
But since then, the plan has been the flashpoint for a
debate — in simplest terms, think of it as fish vs. farms
— that pits the environmental groups, such as the Tuolumne
River Trust, against public utilities, such as the Turlock
Irrigation District, Modesto Irrigation District and the San
Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Those three agencies
share the Tuolumne River’s water rights.
In the mountains and foothills of California, an enduring
drought has depleted the state’s major reserves of water. …
But in the central Sierra Nevada, a trio of artificial lakes
remain flush with cold mountain water. The largest of them,
Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, from which millions of Bay Area
residents receive water, is more than 80 percent full. … But
some environmental advocates are hardly cheering San
Francisco’s water conservation success. Instead, they’re
accusing the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission of
hoarding its water through an excessively conservative
management plan they say harms the environment and benefits
almost no one – not even the city dwellers who use the water.
An environmental group is arguing that the city’s water agency
is taking too much water from the Sierra Nevadas, and that its
drought planning will wind up hoarding water unnecessarily and
hurting vulnerable river ecosystems. The group, Tuolomne
River Trust, says its pleadings have fallen on deaf ears up
until now. But with the state mulling the Bay Delta Water
Quality Control Plan, a plan that would reduce the city’s
rights to water from the Tuolomne River, the question of
whether San Francisco controls more than its fair share of
water is back up for discussion and spilled over into a meeting
of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on
Tuesday.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
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rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
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Our 24×36 inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
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River.
Located in the northwest portion of Yosemite National Park, Hetch
Hetchy refers to a valley in the Sierra Nevada and a reservoir that
supplies water to the San Francisco Bay Area. The valley is
drained by the Tuolumne
River. The name Hetch Hetchy is derived from a Sierra Miwok
word for a type of wild grass.
Owned by the city of San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir
provides water to 2.7 million residents and businesses in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
