Published By: Communications and Public Outreach
 Michael "The Chief" O’Shaughnessy -- City Engineer |
The House adopted the Act on September 3, under the guiding leadership of Congressman William Kent. It was he who had purchased over 400 acres of redwoods in Marin County to save the trees from destruction, then gave the grove to the United States. In 1908, that grove became Muir Woods National Monument.
The battle for the The Raker Act moved to the floor of the Senate. Congressional debate on the Raker Act covers hundreds of pages in the Congressional Record. The Record also lists scores of letters, pro and con, from all parts of the nation. Newspapers from coast to coast took editorial stands for or against the proposed Hetch Hetchy development. First the caucus rooms, then the floor of the Senate itself, became arenas for an extended and heated battle. Spring Valley and its agents made inflammatory claims and charges. San Francisco’s plans were supported by the War Secretary’s Board of Army Engineers.
Except for the Spring Valley Water Company, which fought to keep its monopoly of San Francisco’s water, most of the opposition to the Hetch Hetchy plan came from outside California. National interest was fanned by dire and ominous forecasts by environmentalists. A large photo of Wapama Falls, with the caption “Will be Destroyed by the San Francisco Plan,” was published by the weekly magazine, New York Independent, o n October 30. A group claimed that Hetch Hetchy would ruin Yosemite Valley, 26 miles to the south, and that the Calaveras Big Trees would die of thirst, although they are over 30 miles away!
Other viewpoints, however, were not so parochial or short-sighted. Ansel F. Hall published his H a n d - book of Yosemite National Park in 1921, while he was an information officer for the National Park Service. The chapter, “Geology of Yosemite National Park,” was authored by University of California Geology and Mineralogy Professor Andrew C. Lawson, remembered for chairing the State Earthquake Investigation Commission and naming the San Andreas Rift Zone. Lawson described how glaciers scooped out the Hetch Hetchy Valley and, on receding, dropped glacial debris at the lower entrance to the valley forming a basin for a tarn, or mountain lake, which collected sediment from the melting ice above and built out the level valley floor. Lawson said, “The lake which will soon be created in Hetch Hetchy Valley by the dam at its outlet, now being built by the City of San Francisco, will be but a restoration on a larger scale of the lake which once existed there. The new lake will seem very natural in its mountain setting.”
Other academia were of a different view. The presidents of Harvard University and Radcliffe College joined with their faculties and sent impassioned pleas to the Senate to “save Hetch Hetchy” from San Francisco. However, San Francisco had never stood alone — support was widespread, coming from the California Legislature, every major California city, and all the neighboring communities of the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
Pennsylvania’s Governor Gifford Pinchot, a former National Forester and one of the nation’s most respected environmentalists, provided significant support for San Francisco’s cause. In the Senate, the fight for Hetch Hetchy was led by such statesmen as Key Pittman of Nevada, George C. Perkins of California, George W. Norris of Nebraska, Charles S. Thomas of Colorado, Henry L. Myers of Montana, and William H . Thompson of Kansas.
But the clincher had to be the active support of William Randolph Hearst, editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner and head of a coast-to-coast chain of newspapers. Hearst sent a special staff from the Examiner to Washington, D.C. On the morning of December 2, 1913, a 16- page Washington edition of the Examiner was published and placed on the desk of every senator. On the front page were statements in support of Hetch Hetchy from Vice President of the United States, Thomas R. Marshall, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane and Secretary of Agriculture David F. Houston. The historic Examiner also printed a telegram from the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts advising of their joint meeting and decision to support San Francisco.
The heavyweight opposition to Hetch Hetchy had vanished. The Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts ended their dissatisfaction with the Raker Act once they were assured that their rights were protected and they would actually benefit from electric power surpluses. (However, the Modesto Irrigation District subsequently withdrew its support of the bill at the last minute.) Opposition from the Spring Valley Water Company subsided when a special clause was included in the Act providing that all of the water from sources near San Francisco be used, before water from the Tuolumne could be diverted. This clause protected Spring Valley’s investment in all properties and rights up to the full amount of their waterproducing capacity.
Even Spring Valley’s President William Bourn decided that the handwriting was on the wall and the City was determined to prevail. His address to the Board of Supervisors on May 19, 1913 was later read to the Senate and entered into the Congressional Record, with telling effect. Bourn said, “...there is nothing as deplorable, there is nothing in my life that I regret as much as the water situation in San Francisco today. It is doing the City more harm than the earthquake ever did to it.” He continued, “The City’s object was opposed by the Spring Valley Water Company, the irrigationists of the Turlock - Modesto Irrigation Districts, the promoters of several water schemes, which the City did not want, and by a small group of men who based their objections on a love of nature and opposed creation of a lake where a canyon now exists. All of this opposition, except that of the nature lovers, is withdrawn.”
The Senate adopted the Raker Act during the night session of December 2, 1913. No opposing voice spoke more fervently during the Congressional debates than John Muir, the famous naturalist and lover of the wilderness. Muir was an organizer and the first president of the Sierra Club, serving in that position for 22 years following the club’s founding in San Francisco on May 28, 1892.
It is a rare Sierra Club member who has not heard Muir’s impassioned protest: “Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man!”
Today, as then, John Muir is held in high esteem by the men and women of Hetch Hetchy. They share his love for the wilderness and his concerns for its preservation. To the present time, the name of John Muir is mentioned frequently in this beautiful and protected valley.
Today, as then, Hetch Hetchy people believe Muir was wrong — that a cruel fate indeed would have befallen Hetch Hetchy had the water supply project failed. For, at that time, the automobile was in its ascendancy and it would have been only a matter of time before roads were built into the back country.
There is no doubt that the Yosemite Valley, 26 miles to the south, is one of the crown jewels of Yosemite National Park inspired by John Muir. Often smoggy and reverberating from the noise of tens of thousands of daily visitors, it is hardly in tune with Muir’s scheme of things. The National Park Service is currently in the process of reviewing and changing its policies in Yosemite to temper the impact of these thousands of visitors.
Hetch Hetchy waters, while sustaining millions of people in the San Francisco Bay Area, are no barrier keeping people away from the absolute stillness of the back country wilderness. Those willing to leave their autos, campers or motorcycles will find good hiking trails open from the trailhead at O’Shaughnessy Dam. The best of these trails were constructed and are maintained by the City and County of San Francisco.
The Raker Act has been criticized as a free gift to The City. The Act grants to San Francisco rights-of-way and public lands use in the areas concerned to construct, operate and maintain reservoirs, dams, conduits and other structures necessary or incidental to developing and using water and power. However, the Act imposes many conditions and obligations upon the City, stipulating, among others, that San Francisco was required to:
- Recognize the prior rights of the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation Districts to receive water they can beneficially use, up to specified amounts of the natural daily flow, for direct use and storage.
- Construct miles of scenic r o a d s a n d t r a i l s i n Yosemite National Park, and donate them to the United States.
- Get started on the work of dam building at Hetch Hetchy and complete it as rapidly as possible.
- Enforce specific sanitary regulations within the watershed area.
- Develop electric power for municipal and commercial use.
- Not divert beyond the limits of San Joaquin Valley any more of the watershed waters than is required for its own domestic or municipal purposes, excluding irrigation use.
- Pay an annual rental starting at $15,000 and rising to $30,000 after 20 years.
- Not sell or give Hetch Hetchy water or power to a private person or corporation for resale.
The Raker Act required the Cityto develop hydroelectric power, which would be a natural by-product of the Hetch Hetchy water supply development.
According to the Interior Secretary, this would reduce fuel oil use in California. The federal government was strongly committed to a policy of conservation. Upon signing the Raker Act into law on December 6, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson said, “...it seems to serve the pressing public needs of the region better than they could be served in any other way, and yet does not impair the usefulness or materially detract from the beauty of the public domain.”
The Act was ratified by San Francisco in the Spring of 1914, and the Hetch Hetchy construction program started immediately.
Originally San Francisco sought a water source capable of adding 60 million gallons daily to the local supply. But on the advice of the Board of Army Engineers in 1913, the City shouldered a heavy load, assuming leadership for developing water resources to satisfy the entire San Francisco Bay Region until well into the 21st century.
Later, in the early 1920’s, East Bay cities decided to develop their own supply from the Mokelumne River, leaving Hetch Hetchy to provide primarily for the need of the San Francisco Peninsula and the southern East Bay.
In Washington, members of Congress and President Wilson regarded the Raker Act as an excellent demonstration of the “conservation for use” policy. Advantages to the vast majority of the population and the general public welfare rendered any damage to the environment slight by comparison. Though it was to flare up periodically during later years, the fight for the right to build the Hetch Hetchy Project was over.
