[Sustain] S.F.'s tasty tap water about to get a little murkier

[Richard Knee]

Interesting: Smith talks about the 1913 Raker Act without mentioning it 
by name or discussing the bill's public-power quid pro quo.


Martin Zehr wrote:
>
>
>   S.F.'s tasty tap water about to get a little murkier
>
>
>       By Matt Smith
>       <http://www.sfweekly.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee/?to=306110>
>
>
>         Published on May 19, 2009 at 9:41am
>
>
>         Subject(s):
>
> *Matt Smith on S.F.'s water* 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/search/?keywords=Matt%20Smith%20on%20S.F.%27s%20water>
> **
> We San Franciscans like to fancy ourselves unique, but most such 
> claims don't hold water. We had 1960s counterculture movements, yes, 
> but the thick of that action was at faraway events such as the Chicago 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Chicago> Seven trial and the 
> Stonewall riots. San Francisco 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/San+Francisco> is an unusually 
> beautiful city, sure, but no more so than Truckee 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Truckee>, Santa Cruz 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Santa+Cruz>, or New York 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/New+York>. One thing we have had 
> that no other similarly sized city did was unusually pure water. 
> Melted snow and glacial streams feed the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Hetch+Hetchy>, and the water then 
> piped across the Central Valley and into city faucets and showerheads 
> is so clean and delicious that it's also sold in bottles.
> But that distinction could soon end thanks to a watershed agreement 
> recently approved between San Francisco and the more than two dozen 
> rural and suburban cities, water districts, and utilities that draw 
> water from the Hetch Hetchy system.
> The new 25-year deal closes an epoch of seemingly limitless, perfectly 
> pure water for San Franciscans. Thanks to regional growth and 
> environmental concerns about the ecology of the Tuolumne River 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Tuolumne+River>, the agreement 
> will force San Franciscans, who consume mere drops of water per capita 
> compared to people in other cities, to make do with even less. The new 
> era of scarcity also means San Francisco will have to increase the 
> amount of water the city obtains from local wells, which can contain 
> trace contaminants such as manganese and iron, albeit at levels so low 
> they don't threaten health.
> "San Franciscans think we're members of the Sierra Club 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Sierra+Club>, and take this great 
> water, flush it once, and send it out into the bay," says Ed 
> Harrington <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Ed+Harrington>, general 
> manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/San+Francisco+Public+Utilities+Commission>. 
> "Most people in the world don't get to do that. Now, we're talking 
> about, one, reuse of water. And, two, bringing some of that water out 
> of the ground."
> Some local residents fear Harrington's negotiating team has sold the 
> city down the river by guaranteeing an average of 92 gallons per day 
> to individual water users outside the city, while setting a goal of 
> merely 54 gallons per day for San Franciscans (down from the current 
> 57 gallons).
> "We're not going to have enough water," says Joan Girardot 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Joan+Girardot>, former president 
> of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Coalition+for+San+Francisco+Neighborhoods>, 
> who heads the group's water task force. "This is going to be a huge 
> issue a few years down the road."
> Harrington denies San Francisco has negotiated itself into water 
> shortages. And other experts I spoke to say the complex agreements by 
> which San Francisco obtains water leave plenty of wiggle room to 
> obtain more if need be.
> Nonetheless, the massive new water agreement is significant because it 
> may mark the first time in recent history that famously green-minded 
> San Francisco has to actually concern itself directly with limits 
> imposed by Mother Earth. Unlike other cities, San Franciscans haven't 
> worried about smog because ocean breezes blow our air pollution to the 
> Central Valley. And while cities such as Modesto 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Modesto> hire water cops to cite 
> profligate lawn irrigators, San Francisco has used some of the purest 
> water in the world to irrigate golf courses, while residents rarely 
> give water use a second thought.
> There's nothing like personal pain to spur action. In that spirit, 
> perhaps a new age of limits, prescribed by the city's new water 
> agreement, could be a good thing.
> Most San Franciscans know the rough history of this city's unusually 
> luxurious water system, whereby city fathers, while rebuilding after 
> the 1906 earthquake and fire, secured a reliable source of water by 
> obtaining rights to dam the Tuolumne River at Hetch Hetchy Valley. 
> After battling environmentalists and farmers for a few years, and then 
> performing magical feats of engineering for a few more, in 1923 the 
> city finished the O'Shaughnessy Dam, so that water could descend 160 
> miles to San Francisco.
> *But while the dam is anchored in the granite walls of the Hetch 
> Hetchy Valley, the scheme under which the city has shared the water 
> with towns such as Hayward 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Hayward>, Brisbane 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Brisbane>, and Los Altos Hills 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Los+Altos+Hills> has always been 
> on soft legal ground. The 1913 act of Congress giving San Francisco 
> the right to dam the Tuolumne River named the city the primary 
> beneficiary of the project; but it also allowed city officials to 
> identify "other municipalities or water district(s)" to include in the 
> system. Given that the reservoir contained vastly more water than San 
> Francisco needed at the time, the city has, from early on, sold water 
> to other districts.*
> In the 1970s, when San Francisco sought to raise rates on upstream 
> users while keeping water rates low in the city, the suburban users 
> sued. To settle the lawsuit, the suburban customers and San Francisco 
> struck a 25-year agreement in 1984 --- set to expire in June --- 
> guaranteeing a maximum 184 million gallons per day, at cost, to the 
> suburban customers, compared to 81 million gallons per day for San 
> Francisco. The perpetual guarantee to the suburbs read as a 
> one-sentence afterthought in the 65-page settlement agreement that 
> focused largely on cost allocation. That's because the South and East 
> Bay populations were smaller in those days, and didn't use nearly as 
> much water as they do now. What's more, the tunnels and reservoirs in 
> the Hetch Hetchy system were built to handle as much as 300 million 
> gallons per day, leaving plenty of water for San Francisco even if the 
> city were to grow larger. But the suburbs have grown at a faster clip 
> than the city. And concerns about precarious fish species preclude 
> sucking that much water out of the Tuolumne.
> Indeed, fears about possible environmental lawsuits last fall drove 
> the city to cut a deal with environmental groups. Under the agreement, 
> San Francisco would limit the total draw on the system to an average 
> of 265 million gallons per day, and pay a steep fine for excess usage.
>
>
>         Subject(s):
>
> *Matt Smith on S.F.'s water* 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/search/?keywords=Matt%20Smith%20on%20S.F.%27s%20water>
> Environmental documents completed last fall specify that San 
> Francisco's customers would draw no more than the maximum 81 million 
> gallons per day provided in the 1984 agreement, with everybody's quota 
> cut in the event of a drought. Suburban customers such as Hayward had 
> hoped to increase their draw on the Tuolumne. Instead, Hayward and 
> others will also be compelled to curb their usage under the new deal.
> To make do under the new regime, they'll have to double their levels 
> of conservation, says Art Jensen 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Art+Jensen>, general manager of 
> the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Conservation+Agency>, the suburban 
> users' bargaining group. "San Francisco imposed a limitation on us 
> that we didn't ask for," he says.
> San Franciscans will likewise be asked to conserve. A 2004 PUC study 
> predicted that by 2010, demand for water in San Francisco will be at 
> 92.4 million gallons per day. In order for the San Francisco system to 
> get by on a mere 81 million gallons per day, more well water will be 
> drawn from an aquifer now used by Daly City 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Daly+City> and other communities 
> just south of the city. Golden Gate Park 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Golden+Gate+Park>, meanwhile, will 
> be irrigated with recycled, purified sewage to be treated in a plant 
> built in the park.
> For City Hall watchers such as Girardot 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Girardot> and economist Brian 
> Browne <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Brian+Browne>, who's been a 
> member of the PUC's Revenue Bond Oversight Committee 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Revenue+Bond+Oversight+Committee>, 
> the new usage restrictions put San Francisco in a precarious position, 
> given that the city's population is expected to grow.
> "I believe in 10 years we'll be in a position to have to go out and 
> buy water," Girardot says.
> Harrington, for his part, doesn't rule out this possibility. Current 
> water plans, he says, assume the city will grow by 72,000 residential 
> units by the year 2030. He says the most important part of the 
> agreement wasn't limiting San Francisco water --- it was in getting 
> the suburbs to help pay upfront for infrastructure costs, thus giving 
> San Francisco ratepayers a break.
> Water supplies, he says, are fluid no matter what the agreement says. 
> Harrington suggests that if the need for more water became urgent, San 
> Francisco could buy water from the Turlock 
> <http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Turlock> and Modesto irrigation 
> districts, which also draw water from the Tuolumne.
> Harrington leaves open the possibility of renegotiating last year's 
> environmental deal when it expires in 2018. And he doesn't rule out 
> someday revisiting the legally squishy 184 million gallons per day 
> water guarantee to the suburbs. A water negotiator for a growing 
> metropolis such as San Francisco is like the water in a stream, 
> relentlessly seeking the path of least resistance.
> Whatever San Francisco's path may be, living here will mean contending 
> with limits set by Mother Nature --- just like everybody else.
>  
> http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-05-20/news/take-me-to-the-river/1
>
>
>  
>
>
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