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Interesting: Smith talks about the 1913 Raker Act without mentioning it
by name or discussing the bill's public-power quid pro quo.<br>
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Martin Zehr wrote:
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<h1>S.F.'s tasty tap water about to get a little murkier</h1>
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<h3 class="cvh3">By <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee/?to=306110"><font
color="#658095">Matt Smith</font></a></h3>
<h4 class="cvh4">Published on May 19, 2009 at 9:41am</h4>
<div class="Story">
<div class="ContentSidebar">
<h4 note="WhoWhat">Subject(s):</h4>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/search/?keywords=Matt%20Smith%20on%20S.F.%27s%20water"><strong><font
color="#658095">Matt Smith on S.F.'s water</font></strong></a></div>
<strong></strong><br>
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 <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title="Chicago"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Chicago"><font color="#658095">Chicago</font></a>
Seven trial and the Stonewall riots. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="San Francisco"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/San+Francisco"><font
color="#658095">San Francisco</font></a> is an unusually beautiful
city, sure, but no more so than <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Truckee" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Truckee"><font
color="#658095">Truckee</font></a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Santa Cruz" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Santa+Cruz"><font
color="#658095">Santa Cruz</font></a>, or <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="New York" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/New+York"><font
color="#658095">New York</font></a>. One thing we have had that no
other similarly sized city did was unusually pure water. Melted snow
and glacial streams feed the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Hetch Hetchy"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Hetch+Hetchy"><font
color="#658095">Hetch Hetchy Reservoir</font></a>, 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.<br>
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.<br>
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 <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title="Tuolumne River"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Tuolumne+River"><font
color="#658095">Tuolumne River</font></a>, 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.<br>
"San Franciscans think we're members of the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Sierra Club"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Sierra+Club"><font
color="#658095">Sierra Club</font></a>, and take this great water,
flush it once, and send it out into the bay," says <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title="Ed Harrington"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Ed+Harrington"><font
color="#658095">Ed Harrington</font></a>, general manager of the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
title="San Francisco Public Utilities Commission"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/San+Francisco+Public+Utilities+Commission"><font
color="#658095">San Francisco Public Utilities Commission</font></a>.
"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."<br>
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).<br>
"We're not going to have enough water," says <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Joan Girardot"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Joan+Girardot"><font
color="#658095">Joan Girardot</font></a>, former president of the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Coalition+for+San+Francisco+Neighborhoods"><font
color="#658095">Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods</font></a>,
who heads the group's water task force. "This is going to be a huge
issue a few years down the road."<br>
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.<br>
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 <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Modesto" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Modesto"><font
color="#658095">Modesto</font></a> 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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<b><font color="#cc0000">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 <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Hayward" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Hayward">Hayward</a>,
<a moz-do-not-send="true" title="Brisbane"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Brisbane">Brisbane</a>, and <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title="Los Altos Hills"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Los+Altos+Hills">Los Altos
Hills</a> 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.</font></b><br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<div class="ContentSidebar">
<h4 note="WhoWhat">Subject(s):</h4>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/search/?keywords=Matt%20Smith%20on%20S.F.%27s%20water"><strong><font
color="#658095">Matt Smith on S.F.'s water</font></strong></a></div>
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.<br>
To make do under the new regime, they'll have to double their levels of
conservation, says <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="Art Jensen"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Art+Jensen"><font
color="#658095">Art Jensen</font></a>, general manager of the Bay Area
Water Supply and <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="Conservation Agency"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Conservation+Agency"><font
color="#658095">Conservation Agency</font></a>, the suburban users'
bargaining group. "San Francisco imposed a limitation on us that we
didn't ask for," he says.<br>
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 <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Daly City" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Daly+City"><font
color="#658095">Daly City</font></a> and other communities just south
of the city. <a moz-do-not-send="true" title="Golden Gate Park"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Golden+Gate+Park"><font
color="#658095">Golden Gate Park</font></a>, meanwhile, will be
irrigated with recycled, purified sewage to be treated in a plant built
in the park.<br>
For City Hall watchers such as <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Girardot" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Girardot"><font
color="#658095">Girardot</font></a> and economist <a
moz-do-not-send="true" title="Brian Browne"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Brian+Browne"><font
color="#658095">Brian Browne</font></a>, who's been a member of the
PUC's <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Revenue Bond Oversight Committee"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Revenue+Bond+Oversight+Committee"><font
color="#658095">Revenue Bond Oversight Committee</font></a>, the new
usage restrictions put San Francisco in a precarious position, given
that the city's population is expected to grow.<br>
"I believe in 10 years we'll be in a position to have to go out and buy
water," Girardot says.<br>
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.<br>
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 <a moz-do-not-send="true"
title="Turlock" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/related/to/Turlock"><font
color="#658095">Turlock</font></a> and Modesto irrigation districts,
which also draw water from the Tuolumne.<br>
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.<br>
Whatever San Francisco's path may be, living here will mean contending
with limits set by Mother Nature — just like everybody else.<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-05-20/news/take-me-to-the-river/1">http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-05-20/news/take-me-to-the-river/1</a><br>
<br>
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