Environmentalists are still hoping to remove the O’Shaughnessy Dam, even though the Hetch Hetchy reservoir is filling, thanks to recent heavy rain and snowfall in northern California that could relieve the state’s drought.
The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which lies within the Yosemite National Park, supplies 85% of the water needs of San Francisco and surrounding counties. Yet environmentalists have dreamed of restoring the dramatic valley along the Tuolumne River, which was filled in by the lake when the dam was built in 1938 under the New Deal.
The fact that the state has been suffering from severe drought for eight of the last ten years has not dampened that enthusiasm to see the dam and reservoir taken down, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:
The [San Francisco] water system, which includes the landmark Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, is expected to fill this winter, for the first time since 2019, with nearly 1.5 million acre-feet of water. That’s enough to supply the city’s service area for perhaps seven years.
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But the growing water reserves don’t please everyone. The surplus has renewed concerns about San Francisco stockpiling water at the expense of rivers — and the fish and wildlife that live there. Some want the city to leave more water in stream channels for threatened salmon while others continue a longshot bid to shut down Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite altogether and return the area to its natural state.
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Meanwhile, the group Restore Hetch Hetchy is urging the SFPUC to abandon Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Echoing the sentiments of famed naturalist John Muir, members say the glacially-carved Hetch Hetchy Valley that the reservoir sits in is comparable in grandeur to Yosemite Valley and should not be flooded.
Last year, California began removing four dams on the Klamath River in the far north of the state, conceding to environmentalists and Native American groups that wanted to see salmon runs restored — even as the state suffered a shortage of water and an energy crisis exacerbated by a fall in available hydroelectric power.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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