Leave it to the SF Comicle and one of its travel editors to write 54 column inches about "weighing the value of Hetch Hetchy" and then burying the lead in the last two paragraphs. A long, tortured description of some arcane study about the tourist value of draining the Hetch Hetchy came up with $178 million per year. The travel editor does finally track down an SFPUC Deputy General Manager who notes in the last paragraph
But when asked to indulge in the thought exercise of comparing hypothetical economic outcomes for Hetch Hetchy, Carlin obliged. “The value of that watershed to the Bay Area in general is worth billions and billions of dollars a year, if not tens of billions,” he said.
But my favorite part of the article was the response from the group that wants to drain our main reservoir, Restore Hetch Hetchy, when asked what would replace the storage capacity that is already overtaxed by prodigious Bay Area growth
Rosekrans maintains that the public would be better served if the water in Hetch Hetchy were allowed to flow downstream and be stored elsewhere — the idea being that the valley could be emptied without compromising a cornerstone of San Francisco’s water supply. Where the water would go, whether a new reservoir would need to be built, and other pertinent logistics would have to be determined by lawmakers, Rosekrans says.
Good one. Instead of building net new reservoirs, which we haven't done in more than 40 years, we should dismember the one we have that is almost 2000 acres and let the lawmakers figure out what else to do. I hope the SFPUC guy was chuckling when he spoke to the reporter–if not he was probably crying.
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