Tuolumne County Superior Court Judge Kevin Seibert decided that the 1913 Raker Act, which authorized construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley on the Tuolomne River, precluded any state efforts to remove the dam and that an Oakland, Calif., nonprofit group that brought the suit had filed it decades too late.
The nonprofit, Restore Hetch Hetchy, had contended that the dam, which flooded the valley and created a reservoir that provides fresh water and hydroelectric power to the city of San Francisco and other communities, violated state constitution provisions barring the government from any “unreasonable method of diversion of water.”
The decision could be the beginning of the end of a long-running debate in San Francisco over the dam, the only such structure ever permitted in any national park, according to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.
The debate included the long-running opposition by a now-defunct weekly alternative newspaper and a controversial ballot measure that was defeated in 2012.
“Draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is a terrible idea that an overwhelming majority of San Francisco voters rejected in 2012,” said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who opposed the lawsuit.
“This lawsuit was a bid by the very same advocates to accomplish in a Tuolumne County courthouse what they couldn’t in a San Francisco election,” he said.
But the nonprofit’s executive director, Spreck Rosekrans, said the court got it wrong and pledged to appeal.
“The flooding of Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley was the only such destruction allowed in any of America’s national parks,” Rosekrans said.
“San Francisco is a famously progressive and pro-environment city, and we believe it will eventually come around to embrace restoration,” he said.
Controversy over the flooding of Hetch Hetchy Valley and the establishment of Yosemite National Park led to the creation of the U.S. National Park Service in 1916.
