Posted on 09/14/2004 10:19:26 PM PDT by farmfriend
Lawmakers call for Hetch Hetchy study
By Stuart Leavenworth -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Two California legislators are calling for a state study to examine if a submerged valley in Yosemite National Park could be restored without hurting water and power supplies.
In a Sept. 9 letter, Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, and Lois Wolk, D-Davis, urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to endorse a restoration study for the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which was inundated and turned into a reservoir for San Francisco in 1923.
"We feel this idea is worthy of review by the State of California," wrote Wolk and Canciamilla, who chairs the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.
"California and the nation could recover one of its natural jewels, now a forgotten and seldom visited corner of Yosemite National Park."
Susan Leal, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, said she sympathizes with calls to restore Hetch Hetchy, but said advocates are overlooking the potential costs.
Leal said loss of power could make it hard to close dirty power plants in the Bay Area and ensure clean water for residents.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
I think the valley should be completely restored by removing the dam. As I recall, this is the reservoir that supplies San Francsisco.
Never gonna happen. this is where SF and most of the penninsula get their drinking water from.
It has always struck me as pure hypocrisy that this rich eco-egocentrics, could fight so hard against LA, while Hetch-Hetchy remained flooded and ruined. John Muir described H-H valley as being more beautiful then Yosemite.
Is there something in that water that makes them such whacked out leftists?
He also advocated giving them Tahoe instead. People always seem to leave that part out.
USACoE has been screwing with the water levels in Lake Sakakaweja up here, (Reservoir on the Missouri River in North Dakota) and the result in the low (and lower) years (it never quite seems to be filling) is the increased exposure of thick deposits of silt.
That might not seem so bad, but it takes an entire summer for this quagmire to dry enough for deer to walk out on it without getting stuck in the mud.
The county Sherrif's Dept has a hovercraft for rescuing canoeists/kayakers/boaters stuck there.
I don't know if, over the history of the reservoir, the watershed has been polluted by heavy metals or other chemicals, but if so, they would be trapped in the sediment.
Subaerial exposure and subsequent erosion of those sediments could release toxins which have been trapped there (especially heavy metals), possibly (depending on conditions) in significant amounts. No way will the valley look like it did back when, not in the next few decades, anyway.
Just a Geologist's $0.02
You mean like Mercury from gold mining? Seems like we have had a bit of that here in CA.
Actually I have read reports about the very thing you have here. I was going to see if I could dig up the article I read but have not had time. No removing this dam would not bring the valley back.
BTW, if the dam is breached, anyone recovering that mercury would probably recover a significant amount of gold with it. Get paid to do the enviro-remediation and mine gold as a byproduct. Hmmmm.
Big IF--IF the area was a gold mining area in the past.
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