Features

S.F. seeks $1.6 billion plumbing fix

By Karen Gaudette
Monday October 28, 2002

HETCH HETCHY RESERVOIR – Just north of Yosemite Valley’s grassy meadows and tumbling waterfalls, another slice of paradise lies submerged beneath more than 100 billion gallons of water. 

Since 1934, the Hetch Hetchy Valley has been managed by San Francisco as the vessel that ensures a steady supply of drinking and irrigation water for millions of Californians. 

Now, the city is struggling to keep both the aging system of aqueducts, tunnels and pipelines — and its own legacy as guarantor of the region’s water supply — from disintegrating. 

The network of concrete and steel that has delivered Sierra Nevada snowmelt into the San Francisco Bay area’s kitchen sinks, laboratories and factories is crumbling. Seismologists say a major earthquake could leave 2.4 million customers in four counties without water for up to two months. 

That could add up to more than $28 billion in economic losses for the region, according to estimates by the Bay Area Economic Forum. 

“We’re all living under a cloud and anybody that chooses to ignore that has got their head in the sand,” said Assemblyman Lou Papan, a Democrat from Millbrae, one of the 29 cities, water districts and other agencies that also rely on the system’s water. 

Though Hetch Hetchy’s health is vital to the entire region, it’s up to San Francisco, which has neglected major maintenance for years, to launch a $3.6 billion effort to repair, upgrade and expand the system. 

And that makes its neighbors nervous. Already, a key reservoir that sits on the Calaveras fault is only 30 percent full because of fears of a collapse. 

City politicians have shifted $670 million of revenue from water and electricity sales over the past 20 years away from Hetch Hetchy maintenance to fund such things as health care for the poor and San Francisco’s public transit system, city records show. 

And recent audits have suburban leaders wondering whether San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission can handle the renovation, which includes more than 70 projects that could take 13 years to complete. 

San Francisco voters face the next big step on Nov. 5 — a $1.6 billion bond measure to cover the city’s share of the project. Water rates will more than triple in San Francisco to pay the bond, and double in the suburbs, where customers already pay higher rates. 

A coalition led by San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown has spent nearly $250,000 trying to overcome voters’ distrust and win approval for the bond. Landlord and tenant groups, typically at odds, have united in opposition. 

“Most San Franciscans and owners are civic minded and they want to do the right thing,” said Janan New, director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, which represents landlords, but “they also get mad when they see waste and mismanagement.” 

The Sierra Club, which fought the dam a century ago, also opposes the bond measure, saying the Hetch Hetchy Valley should be returned to its natural state. That’s a long shot in a thirsty, energy-hungry state. 

Other environmental and consumer groups are counting on the dam’s hydroelectric power in their campaign for Proposition D, which would give the city the authority to replace Pacific Gas and Electric Co. with a municipally owned utility. 

Gov. Gray Davis and state lawmakers are poised to intervene. Angering Brown, Davis recently signed legislation that requires the city to keep lawmakers updated on the project, and allows regional water sellers to issue their own bonds to fund the maintenance. 

“The state has made it crystal clear that if San Francisco doesn’t take care of the problem, the state will,” said Jim Chappell, president of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research organization, a citizens group that frequently weighs in on city issues. 

Brown, upset at what he considers meddling, said the city will ensure that the water system will last for another 100 years. “We have done the kind of job founders and creators of Hetch Hetchy would have wanted us to do,” he said.