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Calif. Cities Are Breaking the Bank to Buy Water. S.F. Gets Yosemite Water for $30k. A New Bill Aims to Raise Its Price

/in , , /by /The Sunby Alex Tavlian

As California trudges through its second year of intense drought, forcing local communities to raid contingency funds to pay sky-high retail prices for water supplies, Federal lawmakers are revisiting a deal with the City of San Francisco deemed to be “too-good-to-be-true.” A new bill, introduced by Rep. Connie Conway (R-Tulare), seeks to bring some equity back to one of California’s oldest and biggest water storage deals between the Federal government and the state’s historic big city.

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Bay Area: Do You Know Where Your Water Comes From?

/in , , /by /KQEDby Lauren Sommer, Ezra David Romero, Katrina Schwartz

The Bay Area water system is a byzantine patchwork of agencies — more than 50 in all — that provides water to customers. Some are the ones you see on your water bill. Others are middlemen that provide water to local agencies at the wholesale level.

And some of that water makes a long journey. Southern California has the reputation for tapping far-flung sources for its water needs, but the Bay Area is in the same boat.

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Hetch Hetchy Water & Power Plans Five-Year $140M Mountain Tunnel Project

/in , /by /The Union Democrat (Sonora, Calif.)by Guy McCarthy

The City and County of San Francisco and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission are planning a five-year $140 million project beginning next year to repair, rehabilitate and upgrade the 19-mile-long Mountain Tunnel, a key component of the Hetch Hetchy Water System that takes water from Tuolumne County and sends it to San Francisco.

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Opinion: On the Anniversary of John Muir’s Death, A Wish To See Hetch Hetchy Restored

/in , /by /The Fresno Beeby Barbara Mossberg

For days of infamy — Pearl Harbor and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting — December has a handful. In this list of national anguish two anniversaries of deaths loom. One hundred and six years ago: on Dec. 2, 1913, Congress passed 43-25 (with 29 abstentions) a law drowning Hetch Hetchy, the natural twin of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park, in order to provide water and power to San Francisco. On Dec. 24, 1914, John Muir died.

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SF Mayor Breed Vetoes Supervisors’ Resolution that Supported State River Plan

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

San Francisco Mayor London Breed broke her silence on California’s latest water war Friday, saying she wouldn’t support a state river restoration plan that would mean giving up some of the city’s pristine Hetch Hetchy water. In addition to her unexpected announcement, Breed vetoed a resolution passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors earlier this week that offered the city’s blessing for the little-known, but far-reaching state initiative.

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State High Court Rejects Berkeley Group’s Suit to Drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Bob Egelko

The California Supreme Court rejected a conservation group’s lawsuit Wednesday seeking to drain Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a source of water for San Francisco and surrounding Bay Area communities. Restore Hetch Hetchy, a Berkeley group, argued in its suit that the location of the dam and reservoir, which flooded a valley in the park after construction in 1923, violates a provision of the California Constitution requiring reasonable water use. But a state appeals court in Fresno ruled in July that Congress had overridden state laws when it authorized construction of the dam and reservoir.

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The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy Reservoir In Judges’ Hands

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

The battle to drain the reservoir in Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley reignited Wednesday as critics of the historic dam told a panel of judges in Fresno that their legal case to raze it should proceed, despite an earlier decision to dismiss the suit. In California’s Fifth District Court of Appeal, attorneys for the group Restore Hetch Hetchy reiterated their longtime argument that San Francisco should not be operating a reservoir in a national park because it violates a provision of the state Constitution requiring reasonable water use.

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Environmentalists’ Lawsuit To Drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Heads Back To Court

/in , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)by Paul Rogers

Two years after losing in court and six years after being rejected by voters, a Berkeley environmental group is continuing its long-running battle to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a linchpin of the water supply for 2.6 million Bay Area residents from San Francisco to San Jose to southern Alameda County. The reservoir in Yosemite National Park, built in 1923, violates California’s constitution, according to a lawsuit from the nonprofit group, Restore Hetch Hetchy, because the constitution requires water to be diverted in a “reasonable” way, and there are other places to store Hetch Hetchy’s water that aren’t in a national park.

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