Chinook salmon in the Tuolumne.

MEDIA CENTER - Press

SFPUC chief: Scale back plan for Hetch Hetchy

Source: San Francisco Examiner
Justin Jouvenal
October 11, 2005

San Francisco’s public utilities chief has recommended scaling back part of the massive project to rebuild The City’s seismically vulnerable water system — a pipeline proposal long opposed by environmentalists — after a consultant found there were cheaper alternatives and the project could cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than current projections.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal said Monday that the change, along with a handful of others, would allow the project to come in at its current $4.3 billion price tag but won’t sacrifice seismic reliability, water supply, sustainability and other benchmarks set forward for the project by the SFPUC.

The Hetch Hetchy system carries water 167 miles from the foothills of the Yosemite Valley to 2.4 million Bay Area residents, but studies have found a major quake could knock it out for as long as 60 days.

“We’re still coming with a reliable and cost-effective way of delivering water through 2030,” Leal said.

Leal wants to do away with a decades-old centerpiece of the project: a proposed 47-mile San Joaquin Pipeline, which would carry water from Oakdale to Tracy. SFPUC officials have said in the past the pipeline would add redundancy to the system, so repairs can be made on the other three aging pipelines that cross the San Joaquin Valley.

The consultant’s report found that building the fourth pipeline would cost $986 million, or 44 percent more than SFPUC officials had projected, largely because of obstacles to construction such as power lines and right-of-way issues.

In her recommendations to the SFPUC, Leal said the commission can accomplish its goals for just $337 million through the construction of a new 9-mile pipeline, two new connections, or “crossovers” between the three existing pipes, and replacing about 6 miles of old pipeline.

Heather Dempsey, a director for the Tuolumne River Trust, feared the fourth pipeline might eventually be used to drain more water from the Tuolumne River, which could destroy aquatic habitats and decrease the amount of freshwater flowing into the San Joaquin River and the environmentally sensitive San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta. Environmentalists also worry it would remove an obstacle to sprawl in the Bay Area.

“This is our main objection to the project,” said Michael Bornstein, the San Francisco Bay chapter director of The Sierra Club. “It would be a massive victory [if the SFPUC chooses the cheaper alternative].”

Leal’s recommendations now go to the SFPUC for consideration.