A ballot initiative designed to move San Francisco away from reliance on the reservoir that submerged the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park was overwhelmingly rejected by voters.
Proponents of the initiative, though, said the more than 55,000 votes the measure received demonstrated some success in "inspiring San Franciscans to imagine a different future - one that would increase their water security and begin to reverse the damage the City has done to Yosemite National Park and the Tuolumne River."
Out of the 244,099 votes cast on the Water Conservation & Yosemite Restoration Initiative, 188,924 opposed it.
The initiative would have required San Francisco to create a water conservation task force, and require that task force to present a plan to voters for greater water conservation and restoration of Yosemite National Park.
“Although we have not yet prevailed, the Yosemite Restoration Campaign has achieved many of the goals we set out to accomplish," campaign leaders said in a prepared statement. "For the first time ever, San Franciscans considered a different future that would increase our water security and begin to reverse the damage the City has done to Yosemite National Park and the Tuolumne River. Nearly a quarter voted to reform our 19th century water system so that the Hetch Hetchy Valley and the Tuolumne River can be restored.
“Today was a beginning, not an end. Over 50,000 San Franciscans sent a powerful message to our elected officials that the status quo is not good enough. We will spend the next two years leveraging and expanding this base of support to advance the cause of water reform in San Francisco and environmental restoration in Yosemite. We have no doubt that the values of sustainability and restoration will ultimately prevail."
Proposition F would have required the city to develop a two-part plan to build San Francisco’s local water resources and "reverse the damage done to the environment by the current water system over the last 100 years," the campaign said.
Groups that supported the initiative included the National Wildlife Federation, San Francisco League of Conservation Voters, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Nevada Alliance, Foothill Conservancy, Forest Issues Group, Friends of the River, California Water Impact Network, Eco Equity, Endangered Species Coalition, The Planning and Conservation League, Earth Island Institute and Wild Equity.
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The thing about water rights is that once they're granted, they're very hard to pry away. California is essentially a desert with water primarily from the mountains.
San Francisco might even consider this if they could be guaranteed rights to water storage in Lake Don Pedro. However, Turlock and Modesto would fight it out in court if they were forced to allow equal rights to San Francisco unlike the senior rights they now enjoy.
There's currently a dam at Jackson Lake. I've seen several dams in wilderness areas around Lake Tahoe. The water districts will not give them up. That's the difficulty in trying to tear down dams. You're not likely to see legislation to wrest away water rights, since every legislator can foresee that their constituents' water rights can also be taken away.
Al Runte made some excellent comments. So are the so-called environmental groups selling out for political interests on these mega-solar and wind projects?
Hey Anon,
"Environmental groups" aren't a monolithic block. Some are concerned with green energy, others with conserving wilderness, others with health issues, etc. Not sure if the situation you're referring to reflects a "selling out" by a certain group so much as an instance of competing interests among groups with overlapping concerns.
Which brings us back to Anon 1:47's post. Some are catching on.