Hetch Hetchy restoration is a pricey pipe dream

Yosemite National Park —  It seemed like such a crackpot idea, I had to see the thing for myself -- this perfectly working dam that the environmentalists want to blow up.

They’d settle for blasting a hole through the concrete structure and draining the reservoir, leaving, at least for the short term, a muddy moonscape inside a beige bathtub ring.

Ultimately, maybe in 100 years, the drained Sierra meadow would return to the lovely wilderness it was when the conservationist icon John Muir tromped through 100 years ago.

Muir called this 3,500-foot high Hetch Hetchy Valley “one of nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples.”

And guess what? It’s still a mountain temple.

There’s tranquillity here, unlike the overrun Yosemite Valley nearby. For 90 minutes, my wife and I were the only visitors.

Along the paved pathway across the dam’s 910-foot crest, one sees a jewel-like lake that’s Tahoe-blue, rimmed by towering cliffs, one of them splashed by a year-around waterfall.

Pines are the dominant trees, but there also are splotches of oak, rust-colored in late fall.

The pathway leads to hiking trails. Fishing is allowed from shore, but boating and swimming are banned to preserve water quality. That’s OK. The sides mostly are too steep anyway. This is a giant granite bowl.

Downstream, along the Tuolumne River, fly fishing for big native rainbows is terrific. “It’s hard hiking, but that’s why it’s good fishing,” says state fisheries biologist Dale Mitchell. “On an average day, you have no problem catching four or five an hour.”

This is part of Yosemite National Park, as it was in Muir’s day. But in 1913, San Francisco capitalized on sympathy created by the city’s devastating 1906 earthquake/fire and finagled permission from Congress and President Wilson to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley for its water supply.

It built a medium-sized dam -- named O’Shaughnessy after its city engineer -- that stands 312 feet tall and creates an eight-mile long reservoir, holding 360,000 acre-feet of fresh snowmelt.

The water is so pure that it doesn’t even need filtering before being delivered through tunnels and pipes to 2.4 million Bay Area residents, 160 miles away.

The system also generates 400 megawatts of clean hydroelectricity that juices San Francisco’s government facilities, from its airport to cable cars.

But two decades ago, Reagan Interior Secretary Don Hodel was hearing gripes about Yosemite Valley drowning in tourists. He also heard about a look-alike (that’s a stretch), but dammed, valley 40 miles away by road. Hodel then asked underlings to look into demolishing the dam, restoring the valley for tourists and somehow replacing the lost water and power.

Sure, it’s possible, he was told. And he became a strong advocate of the notion. Environmentalists jumped on it.

“Restoring Hetch Hetchy,” says Spreck Rosekrans, senior analyst for Environmental Defense, “would not only undo an historic wrong and provide an extraordinary recreational resource, it would inspire visitors to undertake other ambitious restoration projects in their own communities.”

A Sacramento Bee editorial writer won a Pulitzer Prize for promoting the cause.

The groups Restore Hetch Hetchy and Environmental Defense, along with UC Davis, released studies a few years ago showing that the project was potentially feasible. San Francisco’s water could be stored downstream, they contended, perhaps by raising Don Pedro Dam east of Modesto, re-plumbing other facilities and banking it underground in the San Joaquin Valley.

The environmental groups pegged the cost at $500 million to $1.6 billion -- low-ball figures, as it turns out.Two state Assembly members -- Democrats Lois Wolk of Davis and Joe Canciamilla of Pittsburg -- asked the Schwarzenegger administration to do a feasibility study. The governor nodded OK.

The Resources Agency study -- actually a study of previous studies -- was released in July.

The two key findings:

* While the restoration concept “does appear technically feasible

* The total project cost would be $3 billion to $10 billion. Want more studies? They’ll cost $20 million initially, and $65 million over 10 years.

So let’s get this straight:

The state of California already is spending billions more than it’s taking in. Voters just approved $43 billion in borrowing to update the state’s sagging infrastructure, including water works. That’s just a down payment on what’s really needed.

There’s a long list of pressing environmental restoration projects that need billions: San Joaquin River salmon runs, Delta estuary, Salton Sea, Owens Valley....

In Washington, the feds are flailing in red ink.

And some enviros think taxpayers should pop for billions to tear down a dam and build new facilities to replace the lost water and power -- so they can watch grass grow in a meadow? OK, eventually there’d be trees, too.

This isn’t just any dam. It’s one of the most efficient water systems anywhere. There’s minimal sediment in the reservoir. The water flows to the Bay Area by gravity; no energy-eating pumps.

Tear-down proponents contend that Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite valleys are “twin sisters.” They quote Muir calling Hetch Hetchy “a wonderfully exact counterpart.” Sorry. Look at the pictures. If anything, Hetch Hetchy is a little cousin -- fewer, shorter waterfalls; less dramatic domes.

Hetch Hetchy is enchanting. Yosemite is spectacular.

The dam never should have been allowed, but it was. It’s long past time for Muir’s disciples to move on to more realistic crusades.

There’s little political support for this.

The Schwarzenegger administration says any next step is up to the feds. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi -- both San Franciscans -- are opposed even to more studies. Sen. Barbara Boxer, next chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, says she’d support another study only if all players agreed. That’s not likely.

Not another taxpayer dime should be spent.

This is a fantasy about an impractical extravagance.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.