Editing Hetch Hetchy (section)

==Proposed restoration==
===Arguments for===
The battle over Hetch Hetchy Valley continues today{{When|date=October 2019}} between those who wish to retain the dam and reservoir, and those who wish to drain the reservoir and return Hetch Hetchy Valley to its former state. Those in favor of dam removal have pointed out that many actions by San Francisco since 1913 have been in violation of the Raker Act, which explicitly stated that power and water from Hetch Hetchy could not be sold to private interests. Hydroelectric power generated from the Hetch Hetchy project is largely sold to Bay Area customers through a private power company, [[Pacific Gas & Electric]] (PG&E). San Francisco was able to accomplish this in 1925 by claiming it had run out of funds to extend the Hetch Hetchy transmission line all the way to the city. The terminus of the incomplete line was "conveniently located next to a PG&E substation", which connected to PG&E's private line which in turn bridged the gap to San Francisco.<ref>{{cite web
|author=Browne, Brian
|title=Western Water Wars: Efforts to Take Over San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy Systems
|publisher=Reason Foundation
|url=http://reason.org/files/cde416327e84a12ce71cd8f166b86c69.pdf
|access-date=2013-05-26}}</ref> The city justified this as a temporary measure, but no attempt to follow through with completing the municipal grid was ever made.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.clovisnews.com/trails/hetch_hetchy_power.html
|title=Hetch Hetchy Power Debacle: Continuing Yosemite Threat
|author=Redmond, Tim
|publisher=Clovis Free Press
|work=Trails
|volume=17
|number=21
|date=2004-05-26
|access-date=2013-05-26}}</ref> Peter Byrne of ''[[SF Weekly]]'' has stated that "the plain language of the Raker Act itself and experts who are familiar with the act (and have no stake in city politics) all agree: The city of San Francisco is not in violation of the Raker Act."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Byrne|first=Peter|title=Delusions of Power|url=http://www.sfweekly.com/2001-04-04/news/delusions-of-power/|publisher=San Francisco Weekly|date=2001-04-04}}</ref> [[Harold L. Ickes]], [[U.S. Department of the Interior|Secretary of the Interior]] in the late 1930s, said there was a violation of the Raker Act, but he and the city reached an agreement in 1945.{{sfn|Righter|2005|page=185}} In 2015, Restore Hetch Hetchy filed a complaint arguing that the construction of the dam had violated a provision in the constitution of California about water use, but the lawsuit was rejected by an appeals court and later the California State Supreme Court.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news|url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/travel/article/Could-Hetch-Hetchy-Valley-be-worth-100-billion-14270246.php|title=Could Hetch Hetchy Valley be worth $100 billion?|last=Thomas|first=Gregory|date=2019-08-01|website=San Francisco Chronicle|access-date=2019-10-01}}</ref>
[[File:Hetch Hetchy May 2011 001.jpg|thumb|right|View of reservoir and Kolana Rock]]

Preservation groups including the Sierra Club and [[Restore Hetch Hetchy]] state that draining Hetch Hetchy would open the valley back up to recreation, a right that should be provided to the American people because the reservoir is within the legal boundaries of a national park. They acknowledge that a concerted effort would have to be made to control the introduction of wildlife and tourism back into the valley in order to prevent destabilization of the ecosystem,<ref>{{cite web
|url=https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/tuolumne/includes/uploads/070511124225-66-DDC_HetchHetchy.pdf
|title=Three Square Miles of Open Space: Is It Enough?
|publisher=University of California Davis
|author=De Carion, Denis
|access-date=2013-05-26
|archive-date=2016-03-03
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303174234/https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/tuolumne/includes/uploads/070511124225-66-DDC_HetchHetchy.pdf
|url-status=dead
}}</ref> and that it might be decades or even centuries before the valley could be returned to natural conditions.<ref>{{cite web
|url=https://vault.sierraclub.org/ca/hetchhetchy/nps_hh_restoration.pdf
|title=Alternatives for Restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley Following Removal of the Dam and Reservoir
|publisher=Sierra Club
|access-date=2013-05-25}}</ref>

In 1987, the idea of razing the O'Shaughnessy Dam gained an adherent in [[Donald P. Hodel|Don Hodel]], [[Secretary]] of the [[United States Department of the Interior|Department of the Interior]] under [[President of the United States|President]] [[Ronald Reagan]].<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6885
|title=Hetch Hetchy reclaimed: The dam downstream
|publisher=The Pulitzer Prizes
|date=2004-08-19
|author=Philp, Tom
|access-date=2013-06-02}}</ref> Hodel called for a study of the effect of tearing down the dam. The [[National Park Service]] concluded that two years after draining the valley, grasses would cover most of its floor and within 10 years, clumps of cone-bearing trees and some oaks would take root. Within 50 years, vegetative cover would be complete except for exposed rocky areas. In this unmanaged scenario, where nature is left to take hold in the valley, eventually a forest would grow, rather than the meadow being restored. However, the same NPS study also finds that with intensive management, an outcome in which "the entire valley would appear much as it did before construction of the reservoir" is feasible.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://vault.sierraclub.org/ca/hetchhetchy/nps_hh_restoration.pdf|last=Riegelhuth|first=Richard|author2=Botti, S. |author3=Keay, J. |title=Alternatives for restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley following removal of the dam and reservoir page 15}}</ref>

The dam would not have to be completely removed; rather, it would only be necessary to cut a hole through the base in order to drain the water and restore natural flows of the Tuolumne River. Most of the dam would remain in place, both to avoid the enormous costs of demolition and removal, and to serve as a monument for the workers who built it.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://backcountrypictures.com/bcp_writing_lies_beneath.pdf
|title=What Lies Beneath?
|publisher=Backcountry Pictures
|access-date=2013-05-25}}</ref> The water storage provided at Hetch Hetchy could be transferred into Lake Don Pedro lower on the Tuolumne River by raising the [[New Don Pedro Dam]] {{convert|30|ft|m|abbr=on}}. Water could be diverted into the Kirkwood and Moccasin Powerhouses using lower-impact [[diversion dam]]s, providing power generation on a seasonal basis, and the increased height, and thus [[hydraulic head]], at Don Pedro would also increase power generation there.<ref>{{cite magazine
|author=Nash, J. Madeline
|title=Is This Worth a Dam?
|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]
|date=2005-07-11
|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1081382,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050714235313/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1081382,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 14, 2005}}</ref> Furthermore, the removal of O'Shaughnessy Dam would not require costly sediment control measures, as would be typical on most dam removal projects, because of the high quality of the Tuolumne River water – in the first 90 years since its construction, only around {{convert|2|in|cm|abbr=on}} of sediment had been deposited in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, much less than most other dams.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/geoengineering/what-happens-when-you-remove-a-dam-14845676 |title=What Happens When You Remove a Dam|author=Biba, Erin|date=2012-12-11 |work=Popular Mechanics|quote=The valley would be covered in about two inches of sediment, which is unusual to Hetch Hetchy; many dams collect large amounts of sediment, however the Tuolumne riverbed is mostly granite and erodes slowly.}}</ref> A 2019 study commissioned by Restore Hetch Hetchy argued that draining the reservoir and equipping the valley with a tourism infrastructure comparable to that of [[Yosemite Valley]] (which receives around 100 times as many visitors annually as Hetch Hetchy's 44,000) could result in a "recreational value" of up to $178 million per year, or possibly an overall economic value of up to $100 billion.<ref name=":1" />

===Arguments against===
[[File:View-at-Hetch-Hetchy-California.jpg|thumb|View point by the O'Shaughnessy Dam]]

Those in opposition of dam removal state that demolishing O'Shaughnessy Dam would take away a valuable source of clean, renewable hydroelectric power in the Kirkwood and Moccasin powerhouses; even if measures such as seasonal water diversion into the powerhouses were employed, it would only make up for a fraction of the original power production.<ref name="EDF">{{cite web|url=http://apps.edf.org/documents/4039_hetchhetchyrestored_Chap09.pdf|title=Chapter 9: Impact of restoration on hydropower production and revenues|publisher=Environmental Defense Fund|access-date=2013-05-25}}{{Dead link|date=May 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> The remaining deficit would likely have to be replaced by polluting fossil fuel generation.<ref name="faq"/> The removal of the dam would be extremely costly, at least $3–10 billion,<ref name="RestorationStudy">{{cite web
|url=http://www.water.ca.gov/pubs/environment/hetch_hetchy_restoration_study/hetch_hetchy_restoration_study_report.pdf
|title=Hetch Hetchy Restoration Study
|publisher=California Department of Water Resources
|year=2006
|access-date=2013-05-25}}</ref> and the transport of the demolished material away from the dam site along the narrow, winding Hetch Hetchy Road would be a logistical nightmare with possible environmental impacts. Most importantly, San Francisco would lose its source of high-quality mountain water, and would have to depend on lower-quality water from other reservoirs – which would require costly filtration and re-engineering of the aqueduct system – to meet its needs.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/worth_a_dam/
|title=Worth a Dam? Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite
|publisher=Earth Island Journal
|year=2012
|access-date=2013-05-26}}</ref><ref>{{cite news
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/science/earth/hetch-hetchy-valley-measure-pits-bay-area-against-environmentalists.html
|title=Putting Bay Area's Water Sources to a Vote
|author=Onishi, Norimitsu
|date=2012-09-09
|work=The New York Times
|access-date=2013-05-26}}</ref>

The economic wisdom of removing the dam has been frequently questioned.<ref>{{cite news
|author=Bowe, Rebecca
|title=Ecological rewind: Environmentalists want to tear down O'Shaughnessy Dam and restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley, but does their plan hold water?
|work=San Francisco Bay Guardian
|date=2011-08-09
}}</ref> Some observers, such as [[Carl Pope (environmentalist)|Carl Pope]] (director of the [[Sierra Club]]), stated that Hodel had political motives<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.sierraclub.org/ca/hetchhetchy/undamming_hh_NovDec87.html|title=Undamming Hetch Hetchy|first=Carl|last=Pope|publisher=Sierra Club|journal=Sierra |date=November–December 1987|pages=34–38}}</ref> in proposing the study. The imputed motive was to divide the environmental movement: to see residents of the strongly Democratic city of San Francisco coming out against an environmental issue. [[Dianne Feinstein]], the [[mayor]] of San Francisco at the time, said in a ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' story in 1987: "All this is for an expanded campground?&nbsp;... It's dumb, dumb, dumb."<ref>{{cite news
|author1=Morain, Dan |author2=Houston, Paul |title=Hodel Would Tear Down Dam in Hetch Hetchy
|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-08-07-mn-1121-story.html
|work=Los Angeles Times
|date=1987-08-07
|access-date=2013-05-25}}</ref> Hodel, now retired, remains {{When|date=October 2019}} a strong proponent of restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley and Senator Feinstein remained {{When|date=October 2019}} strongly against restoration.{{Citation needed|date=October 2019}} The [[George W. Bush administration]] proposed allocating $7 million to studying the removal of the dam in the 2007 National Park Service budget.{{sfn|Glennon|2009|p=121}} Dianne Feinstein opposed this allocation, saying, "I will do all I can to make sure it isn't included in the final bill. We're not going to remove this dam, and the funding is unnecessary."<ref>{{cite news|last=Doyle|first=Michael|title=Hetch Hetchy debate reborn|newspaper=[[Sacramento Bee]]|date=2007-02-08}}</ref>

Opponents of dam removal have pointed out that the flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley has also deterred the crowds that overrun other areas of Yosemite National Park. As of 2013, Hetch Hetchy remains one of the least visited developed area of the park.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hetchhetchy.org/how/what-will-a-restored-valley-look-like|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130704023021/http://www.hetchhetchy.org/how/what-will-a-restored-valley-look-like|url-status=dead|archive-date=2013-07-04|title=What will a restored valley look like?|publisher=Restore Hetch Hetchy|access-date=2013-07-02}}</ref> Karin Klein has described Yosemite Valley as "so crammed&nbsp;... that it looks more like a ripstop ghetto than the site of a nature experience."<ref name="la_times_editorial_muir_wrong">{{cite news
|author=Klein, Karin
|title=On Hetch Hetchy, John Muir was wrong: California's revered naturalist wrote a poetic diatribe against the drowning of the great valley. But the reservoir has spared it some of the indignities of Yosemite Valley.
|work=Los Angeles Times
|date=2012-08-15
|url=https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-xpm-2012-aug-15-la-ed-yosemite-hetch-hetchy-20120815-story.html
|language=en-US
|issn=0458-3035
}}</ref> She does support breaching the dam once it has reached the end of its lifespan, and not replacing it.<ref name="la_times_editorial_muir_wrong"/>
In November 2012, San Francisco voters soundly rejected Proposition F,<ref>{{cite web|title=San Francisco Department of Elections, November 2012 Results|url=http://sfelections.org/results/20121106/|access-date=29 November 2012}}</ref> which would have required the city to conduct an $8 million study on how the flooded valley could be drained and restored to its former state. The proposed study would also have been required to identify potential replacements for the water storage capacity and hydroelectric power production.<ref>{{cite news|last=Wildermuth|first=John|title=Hetch Hetchy fight not over, activists say|newspaper=[[San Francisco Examiner]]|date=2012-11-10}}</ref><ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.mercurynews.com/elections/ci_21944305/san-francisco-vote-study-draining-hetch-hetchy-reservoir
|title=San Francisco vote to study draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is defeated
|author=Rogers, Paul
|work=Mercury News
|date=2012-11-12
|access-date=2013-05-25}}</ref>