Reclaiming the lost Yosemite

Last year, Tom Philp had a wild and crazy idea. If 2.4 million people who live in and around San Francisco could find another source of water, he suggested, one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, a valley said to match Yosemite in its grandeur, could be reclaimed.

To no one's surprise, San Francisco officials were not keen on Philp's idea. There was sputtering all around.

But others were impressed. On Monday, Philp's wild and crazy idea, explored in a series of editorials and columns in the Sacramento Bee, won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Editorial Writing.

You may have heard of Philp's valley. It's called Hetch Hetchy.

And if it once matched the beauty of Yosemite Valley, there's a reason: Hetch Hetchy was Yosemite's twin brother, the first glacial valley to the north.

At least it was a valley until folks from San Francisco filled it with water and called it a reservoir.

Naturalist John Muir fought the idea of destroying what he called "the most beautiful of all mountain parks." Early maps and photographs show rock domes and sheer granite walls, massive waterfalls, elegant cascades, a meandering river, broad meadows and other features comparable to Yosemite. Muir declared Hetch Hetchy to be more beautiful than Yosemite.

But Congress, in 1913, rejected Muir's pleas, voting to let San Francisco break off a piece of Yosemite National Park and turn it into a storage pond.

Muir, who had written to a friend that the fight over Hetch Hetchy was killing him, died the following year.

By 1923, the valley was gone, replaced by three square miles of water, 300 feet deep.

In a series of commentaries, Philp retold the story of Hetch Hetchy and the controversy that continues to this day - and then he added one more piece of information.

A computer-modeling program, developed at the University of California at Davis, determined that San Francisco and environs could get along without Hetch Hetchy water if downstream water districts on the Tuolumne River were willing to share. Downstream, New Don Pedro Reservoir, built decades later, holds more than five times the water in Hetch Hetchy.

There is enough water to go around, the calculations showed, if local agencies would cooperate.

If that's true, Philp posited, why not punch a hole in the dam, drain the reservoir and return Muir's valley to its natural glory?

As Philp was explaining, you could almost hear the wagons circling.

Impossible, said Bay Area officials.

Preposterous, said the representative of downstream water districts.

"A terrible mistake," said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the one-time mayor of San Francisco. She described the water behind O'Shaughnessy Dam as San Francisco's "birthright."

In water-scarce California, they all agreed, it would be crazy to destroy an existing source of water.

There is, it should be mentioned, a subplot to all these machinations.

For decades, the residents of liberal San Francisco have been happily condemning others for their environmental abuses - the suburbs for their sprawl, Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley farmers for their cheap water, Los Angeles for draining the Owens Valley (and for almost everything else).

This was the city, Philp noted, that was eager to meddle in other people's business, from supporting more stringent regulation of chemicals in the European Union to opposing the consumption of Chilean sea bass.

So it was easy to see that past victims of the city's condescension were enjoying San Francisco's discomfort with the idea of surrendering Hetch Hetchy.

So tell us again, San Francisco, how you rationalize the destruction of what John Muir, the father of all environmentalists, described as the most beautiful place on earth?

It was widely believed in 1987 that then-Interior Secretary Donald Hodel proposed a Hetch Hetchy study just to goad San Francisco. Hodel said he got the idea after a park official told him, "You know, there is another Yosemite Valley."

At the time, most environmental groups wanted nothing to do with an idea from a conservative Republican administration they viewed as anti-environment.

This time, however, at least a few groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, say the idea deserves further consideration.

Speaking of cheap water, Philp noted that San Francisco pays less in daily rent on National Park property than a visitor would pay for one night's stay in a Yosemite Valley tent cabin. The annual fee, $30,000, hasn't changed since 1938.

In November, responding to the Bee's editorials, the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to conduct a preliminary study of the implications of this wild and crazy idea.

And, on Monday, Philp choked back tears as an Associated Press news bulletin announced that he had won journalism's highest honor.

Will we see Hetch Hetchy restored? Not in our lifetimes.

In California, water is power, economic and political.

San Francisco and the two downstream water districts in Turlock and Modesto will fight with everything they have to keep what they view as theirs and theirs alone.

And this is, after all, California, where political and legal systems show little regard for such old-fashioned words as cooperation.

Maybe some day. If it could be demonstrated that the Bay Area could be served by other water supplies, why not?

Wild places such as Yosemite are so rare and magical. In "John Muir - Nature's Vision," a National Geographic book by Gretel Ehrlich, we read from the naturalist's letter to President Theodore Roosevelt:

"These sacred mountain temples are the holiest ground that the heart of man has consecrated, and it behooves us all faithfully to do our part in seeing that our wild mountain parks are passed on unspoiled to those who come after us."

For Hetch Hetchy, it is too late to be forever unspoiled, but what if it could be found again?