It is a 312-foot, gravity arch concrete dam. It has a capacity of 360,360 acre-feet of water.
The natural beauty of Hetch Hetchy Valley is beyond argument, and there was much controversy over the dam, that continues to this day.
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2 Construction of the dam 3 Raze the O'Shaughnessy? 4 Final words 5 External links and references |
The dam was subject to environmental controversy from the start, with pioneering environmentalist John Muir vehemently opposing the plan to his death in 1914, famously observing,
Controversy
In 1913, the Raker Act was passed, which authorized the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley.
The dam was finished in 1923, primarily to provide water for the city of San Francisco, as well as hydropower. Notably, San Francisco had suffered horribly during fires for lack of water, notably in her 1906 earthquake, and was fishing for a dependable water source. Hetch Hetchy Valley fit the bill.
In 1987, the idea of razing the O'Shaughnessy gained an adherent from an unexpected quarter — Donald Hodel, then secretary of the Department of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, was trying to polish the Reagan administration's poor environmental image, and once advocated tearing down the dam.
Nothing ever came of it; there were suspicions that he had other political pretexts, to see residents of the left wing city of San Francisco coming out against an environmental issue — the leftist mayor of San Francisco, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a Los Angeles Times story in 1987: "All this is for an expanded campground? ... It's dumb, dumb, dumb."
The reservoir behind the O'Shaughnessy, owned by San Francisco, serves around 2.4 million people in the city, the Peninsula, as well as Silicon Valley and in southern Alameda County. Hetch Hetchy Valley is a reservoir, though there are hiking trails.Construction of the dam
Raze the O'Shaughnessy?
Final words