The Battle of The Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam And the Birth of Modern Environmentalism By Robert W. Righter Oxford University Press © 2005
Bobby Winston, Editor
The Battle of The Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam And the Birth of Modern Environmentalism
By Robert W. Righter
Published: August, 2005
Oxford University Press © 2005
The ideal of regionalism is bandied about as can’t by Bay Area civic and community, but, like all big ideas, the implications are never as clear-cut as would seem.
Supporters of regionalism first made their appearance in the Bay Area in the late 1800’s, in the form of well-heeled, and even better-intentioned, San Francisco plutocrats, like James Phelan. Heir to a significant fortune, and suffused with do-goodism, Phelan devoted much of his life to promoting what he termed Greater San Francisco. But very little came of it, mostly because Oakland was savvy enough to realize that Greater San Francisco added up to Oakland paying all the bills and San Francisco making all the decisions.
Two concrete manifestations of Phelan’s vision are with us today: the Bay Bridge and the Hetch Hetchy water system. Both were born of boosterism in extremis; and both have proven to be problematic. The Bay Bridge played a non-inconsequential role on destroying public transit and livable communities, which are now being re-built at an astronomical cost. Hetch Hetchy brought water aplenty to the Bay Area, but also at gargantuan financial and moral costs.
Splinter groups have formed to promote the restoration of Hetch Hetchy. Though their efforts have a likelihood of success,approaching precisely zero, the sad story of Hetch Hetchy – that of good intentions overcoming common sense – has attracted new interest.
Excerpts:
Albert Bierstadt came to San Francisco with his paints and palette in the fall of 1872, looking for sublime mountain scenery, the kind that would guarantee him an income, as well as enhance his reputation as a landscape artist... in July, 1873, he set out with his wife and three friends on a six-week pack trip to the Hetch Hetchy region… It’s smaller than the more famous valley, he explained, but it presents many of the same features in its scenery, and is quite as beautiful. When Bierstadt emerged from the mountains in late August, a San Francisco reporter noted that he was laden with sketches from a spot which, as yet, is almost untrodden soil. We know that from these sketches Bierstadt produced at least four oil paintings, possibly more. In 1876, Mount Holyoke College acquired one of Bierstadt’s paintings, simply called Hetch Hetchy Canyon, to hang in its art museum, an example of the impact of art in publicizing the little known valley.
(Hetch Hetchy advocate John) Muir’s writings, so attractive to women, annoyed (San Francisco City Engineer) Manson. Although the engineer was a member of the Sierra Club and had published in the Sierra Club Bulletin, he delighted in lampooning Muir’s flowery writing style. Muir’s views were too full of verbal lingerie, allowing the romantic mountaineer to speak of networks, veils, downy feathers, plumes, and embroideries. Such writing by the archetypal nature faker obscured the practical facts that Manson believed any sane human could grasp. Short-haired women and long-haired men dominated these rabid sentimentalists, he claimed. Perhaps the most flagrant attack on Muir came from the San Francisco Call, one of Manson’s favorite newspapers. The fiery newspaper ran a cartoon of Muir as a plump woman with a housewife’s dress, flowered hat, and a broom, sweeping back the flood of water issuing from the Hetch Hetchy project.
Support for Hetch Hetchy defenders came from Representative Halvor Steenerson of Minnesota. He attacked (San Francisco consultant John) Freeman’s presumptions regarding reservoirs, (which stated) that during low water, visitors would view a dirty, muddy pond, and probably some dead fish and frogs in it. Steenerson also raised the issue of a dominant, imperial San Francisco, holding sway over the hinterlands. He was opposed to the eternal drawing upon the federal government resources, and of the people to make cities more attractive at the expense of the country. Steenerson defended sentiment, giving the legislators an aphorism to think about. It is a wise saying that the man who writes the songs of a people has more influence than he who writes his laws.
At the time (San Francisco City Engineer) O’Shaughnessy was attempting to entice the East Bay Municipal Utilities District, or EBMUD, the District hired consulting engineer Steven Kieffer to investigate an independent system. Kieffer surveyed the possibility of the Mokelumne River… (their) report was damaging to San Francisco’s hopes. The engineers noted that an independent system would be free of actions by San Francisco, and that the proposed water source would be 40 miles nearer than the Hetch Hetchy system. The consultants pointed out other features, most significant that the Mokelumne River project could be progressively built, expenditures made as the water was needed, and that way Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond would not suffer extensive loss on unused construction.
In the 1919 Report of the Director of the National Park Service… the National Park Service…identified the menace of irrigation projects. Water storage was (deemed) inappropriate in Yellowstone, Glacier and other parks, because of the destruction of natural environments, creating artificial landscapes and a general eyesore. (The report posed the question) Is there not some place in this great nation of ours where lakes can be preserved in their natural state; where we, and all generations to follow us can enjoy the beauty and charm of mountain waters in the midst of primeval forests?
Franklin K. Lane, San Francisco City Attorney and, then, Secretary of the Interior did not receive such challenging questions gracefully... Lane subscribed to the idea that man ought to dominate and control nature. Water running unchecked to the sea represented waste. When Lane gave the commencement address at Brown University, he revealed his resource philosophy. Every tree is a challenge to use, pronounced the Secretary. And every pool of water, and every foot of soil. The mountains are our enemies. We must pierce them, and make them serve. The sinful rivers we must curb.
Wilderness is a slippery concept. Native American peoples have noted that the turn is ethnocentric. What was wilderness to a European-American was home to a Native American. Moreover, the word has changing meanings, and definitions abound. Roderick Nash points out that, One man’s wilderness may be another’s roadside picnic ground. Some might see wilderness as their suburban backyard, or a tent on top of an apartment building. I once had a colleague who defined a wilderness experience as the walk between his air-conditioned house and his air conditioned automobile.
On a more serious note, many within the academic community see wilderness as a culturally constructed notion that is at best, romantic, at worst, racist, exclusionist, and historical. However, in the context of the Hetchy Hetchy historiography, the Wilderness Act of 1964 can provide a workable definition. To be eligible for the American Wilderness System, an area should be at least 5,000 acres in size, be effected primarily by the forces of nature, and include outstanding opportunities for solitude, or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation. It is to be an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man; where man, himself, is a visitor who does not remain. This definition assumes that wilderness is a place, not an idea.
