Dam Shame

The San Francisco Bay Area gets 85% of its drinking water from Hetch Hetchy reservoir. The reservoir, which is fed by the Tuolomne River and surrounding watershed, is 8 miles long and holds up to 117 billion gallons of water. The reservoir was created when the O’Shaughnessy Dam was completed in 1938. Beginning with the purity of its origins in the snow-capped wilderness peaks of the Sierra and accumulating throughout a 459 square mile protected watershed, it is one of the nation's premier drinking water systems, serving approximately 2.4 million people.

I didn’t know any of this until my recent vacation visit to this grand water retention project located in the northwest corner of Yosemite National Park. A couple of other things I didn’t know: the rising waters behind the dam displaced as many as 8 Indian tribes, who either moved to other land “reserved” for them or, as one would expect, to higher ground. I also found out that Chuckchansi is the name of an actual Indian tribe, not a craps table mascot named “Chuck Chancey."

Note of American Indian Irony: While touring the Yosemite Museum, I came upon a Native American woman dressed in traditional post-occupational attire sitting at a display as a cultural interpreter. She was on the phone, and I overheard her ask about...making a reservation. 

If I wrote interpretive signs for the National Park Service.

My trip to Hetch Hetchy was made out of curiosity, and I admit I did learn a few things. Along with the preceding tourbook tidbits, there were several interpretive signs that celebrated the dam as an engineering marvel for its time, with one noting the efforts of the dam's visionary, Mr. Mike O’Shaughnessy, he himself a chief, albeit of the engineering variety. There was also one interpretive sign specific to the Indians, but I found that to be a weak effort to downplay their eviction. Sort of like, “…but we didn’t kick them all the way out.”

I had read quite a bit about how this valley would have rivaled Yosemite Valley, and indeed the literature, guides and whatnot all extolled the grandeur that was still above the waterline. Even the park ranger at the entry kiosk built up our arrival and our expectations. After a week of hiking around Yosemite proper, my wife and I were now excited to check out the “other” Yosemite for comparison. They sold it pretty well, but I was not impressed. Hetch Hetchy turned out to be more of a location than a destination. Unless you're prepared to pack into the back country, there's not much "there" there. Only a five-mile hike on a trail set back from a body of water you can't swim in or boat on. Or throw rocks into. Or camp next to. Because it's special water. It's water for a city that's surrounded on three sides by...water.

I love the outdoors, but I'm not a tree hugger or a card-carrying member of a radical environmental group. San Francisco isn't the first city to reach out with a pipeline to sustain their existence, so I won't criticize them for tapping into a natural resource for their own benefit. What happened 70, 80 years ago is what it is. Siding with the argument that the dam should be torn down to allow the land to reclaim itself is moot. I won't be able to enjoy the new landscape in my lifetime, nor will my children. But I can enjoy other places, like Yosemite. And San Francisco. I'll have a different feeling when being served water in that city, though. I'll have a sense of the water's history. A sense of what one culture lost for another culture's gain. I've been to the dam, to the reservoir...I've stood in the famous alpine meadows of the Sierra high country and watched the Tuolomne River begin its meandering trek to the faucets of the City by the Bay.

I have gained a new appreciation for the water, for I have been to its source.

“The most important factor in water quality is

its source.” – S.F. Public Utilities Commission