A question for Bay Area environmentalists

[Xithras]

Is there any organized opposition yet to the overhaul plans for the Hetch Hetchy pipeline? I was recently reading an article on how the installation of the fourth pipeline was going to help facilitate San Francisco's taking more water from the Tuolumne River watershed, a charge that SF denied. Now we find out that two of the three proposals the SFPUC has put forward for managing increasing water demand DO involve taking millions of additional gallons a year from the new pipeline.

The water diversions from the Tuolumne River dams have been an environmental disaster, and only decades of work and court fights have kept it from becoming a sterile, dry riverbed like it's neighbor the San Joaquin. Still, its water flow slows to a trickle in the late summer, so much so that an adult can easily walk across it (this river was plied by steamships year round before the diversions started). Many species native to the river, and nearly all of its native riparian forest, today only exist in photographs and history books. Other species, like the Tuolumne salmon run, teeter on the edge with only a few hundred individuals left.

If these diversions happen, the Tuolumne will become the San Joaquin, and will probably go dry in the summer. That will wipe out countless species, and destroy the last of its shoreline riparian forest. It will also devastate the delta, which is already having saltwater intrusion issues because freshwater river flows are so low for much of the year. THAT would be an environmental disaster unparalleled in California history.

Is there any opposition to this, or is it being overlooked because it's YOUR drinking water? Can we count on the help of Bay Area activists in this fight, or will we in the Central Valley be left to fight this one alone?

[XemaSab]

1. Thanks for asking the question.

It's a good one, and one that I'd like to see coherently answered.