Congressman: San Francisco's Water Practices Are Illegal
Rep. Dan Lungren calls on feds to investigate whether city is doing enough to capture and recycle water
A Sacramento County congressman is calling on the federal government to investigate whether San Francisco is violating a nearly century-old law that allows it to use Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park as a water reservoir.
In 1913, when San Francisco depended heavily on water sold by private companies, the city’s lobbyists convinced Congress to pass the Raker Act, a bill that permitted the city to create Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to help meet the water needs of the city and its residents. The bill was bitterly contested by John Muir and other early environmentalists, and is regarded as the beginning of the modern environmental movement.
The eight-mile long reservoir captures rain and snowmelt and diverts it from the Tuolumne River into pipes that snake west to the Bay Area, where the water is used by residents of San Francisco and other cities along the Peninsula and in the East Bay.
The Raker Act prohibits San Francisco from diverting any more water from the Tuolomne watershed than is necessary to meet its needs, “together with the waters which it now has or may hereafter acquire.”
In a letter sent Friday to Ken Salazar, the secretary of the Interior, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) asserted that the city is violating that law by failing to build wells, rainwater tanks and water recycling facilities.
Since O'Shaughnessy Dam was built in the 1930s, forming Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, scores of wells in San Francisco have been capped, and the use of groundwater within the city has fallen to 2.2 million gallons per day, from 14.5 million gallons daily, according to Lungren’s letter.
Meanwhile, Lungren said that while Los Angeles, Orange County and other California municipalities are recycling water for irrigation and industrial uses, San Francisco does not recycle any water, instead dumping its treated sewage into the sea.
Lungren also said in the letter that San Francisco fails to capture rain that falls within the city.
“It is my belief that by transporting and using the water captured from the Tuolumne River, without first fully utilizing these local resources, the city is failing to satisfy the clear mandate of the Raker Act,” Lungren wrote. “I respectfully request the Department of Interior investigate what I believe is a violation of federal law.”
Lungren in recent years has called on San Francisco to tear down the dam and restore Hetch Hetchy Valley, a move that environmentalists say could be achieved without jeopardizing Bay Area water supplies if other reservoirs are expanded.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which recently turned down a request by the nonprofit Restore Hetch Hetchy group to hold a hearing into a proposal to drain the reservoir, defended its water practices and said it plans to review Lungren's letter.
About one-third of the water drawn from Hetch Hetchy is used within San Francisco.
"One glaring omission is that the letter makes no mention of the Hetch Hetchy regional water system being a system used by 2.5 million people in the Bay Area," said Tyrone Jue, a commission spokesman. "It seems to focus on it being a San Francisco-only system."
Jue said the agency is preparing plans to build water recycling facilities on the east and west sides of the city and is reviewing the possible environmental impact of proposed new wells. He said the commission also provides subsidies to help residents purchase rainwater tanks.
"Over the last four years, in San Francisco we’ve sold 643 rain barrels and 113 larger tanks called cisterns," Jue said. "Twenty of the cisterns are installed or about to be installed in San Francisco schools."
Spreck Rosekrans, a member of the board of directors of Restore Hetch Hetchy and co-author of a 2004 report that outlined options for restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, said San Francisco is pursuing increased use of local water supplies but that it “lags behind most of the state” in those efforts.
Adam Fetcher, a spokesman for Salazar, said the Department of the Interior will review Lungren's letter.
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