Hetch Hetchy Project Study Gets Priority

SAN FRANCISCO —  An Interior Department task force set up to study the restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley met for the first time Friday and set an Aug. 25 deadline for its first, preliminary report, a department spokesman said.

Alan Levitt said the group, which included representatives of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and several other Interior Department agencies, came up with two pages of questions that must be answered before any work could begin on the project.

Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel directed his staff earlier this week to look into the feasibility of draining the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park and returning the valley to its natural state. Levitt said the task force plans to prepare a briefing for Hodel when he returns to Washington Aug. 25 from a trip to Alaska.

The reservoir was created early in this century with a dam project that sparked one of the most bitter environmental battles in state history. It provides water for an estimated 2 million people in San Francisco and neighboring communities and is a source of electrical power in Northern California.

Anger and Derision

Hodel’s idea was met with anger and derision by Mayor Dianne Feinstein and other officials here. Environmentalists, who generally regard Hodel with suspicion, were cautiously supportive.

Friday’s meeting in Washington lasted 1 1/2 hours and “got a lot of people’s juices flowing,” said Levitt, who described the Hetch Hetchy proposal as “one of the highest priorities in the department.”

Key questions include how to provide alternative water and power supplies and whether to order the demolition of O’Shaughnessy dam, a 430-foot structure on the Tuolomne River.

Levitt said the meeting was the “first step on a 1,000-mile walk,” and that any dismantling of the Hetch Hetchy water system might not occur for decades.

The department, meanwhile, sent a letter to San Francisco Mayor Feinstein asking for information regarding the Hetch Hetchy project.