Comment by ashdksnndck
3 days ago
Can you clarify what you mean by: “they refuse to repurpose a downstream dam”
California has insufficient water storage to meet demand, it’s not like we have huge dams lying around that we leave empty when there is water available to fill them.
You might be referring to Don Pedro dam - but we are already filling that up (modulo what we need to keep empty for flood control). SF has some contractual right they could possibly exercise to water in Don Pedro but that doesn’t magically result in California’s water supply being held constant if we stop storing water in the Hetch Hetchy. If SF gets the Don Pedro water, that means someone else that was going to get it is deprived.
Now, you could argue that the state can get by with lower storage because ag needs to consume less or more groundwater recharge or whatever, but that’s a different question.
There is and have been entire plans that address this, including in the last real attempt that almost went anywhere. You add things like groundwater recharge. I have groundwater recharge in the basin I live in. But today, in 2026, reductions elsewhere already exceed the capacity of Hetch Hetchy by an order of magnitude.
California has rewilded the Trinity River, resurrected Mono Lake, and has protected a lot of its special places. Voters have voted to tax themselves for state parks. I know that the environment, especially aside from climate issues, just aren't sexy right now. But it still matters to me. I remember the Southern California skies in the 1970s. It's not perfect now, but the improvement despite the increase in people and cars is something to celebrate too.
The only people who oppose this are the rate payers in the place that externalized the cost of the Hetch Hetchy on the world.
Some of the environmental word today might just shout slogans and prattle on with pseudoscientific babble, but there have been a lot of serious people in these efforts, just like with the other cases I mentioned.