San Francisco's Sweet Hetch Hetchy Deal Changes in June
San Franciscans will soon have to learn how to ration our precious Hetch Hetchy Reservoir water after a 25-year long deal with twelve other suburban cities expires in June.
According to SF Weekly, San Francisco residents consume mere drops of water per capita compared to people in other cities, and locals are saying we were "sold down the river" in this latest deal: An average of 92 gallons per day will be guaranteed to individual water users outside the city, while merely 54 gallons per day will go to San Franciscans (down from the current 57 gallons).
Ed Harrington, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), said the most important part of this agreement was in getting the suburbs to help pay upfront for infrastructure costs, which will give San Francisco ratepayers a break. San Francisco has a long history of finagling with the East and South Bay over water supplies, since gaining the right to dam the Tuolumne River back in 1913. The city has often had large water rations, which were sold to other districts, and now the roles will be reversed.
Environmental documents drawn up last fall state that San Francisco and the other cities would limit the total draw on the system to an average of 265 million gallons per day, and pay a steep fine for excess usage. San Francisco's share will be 81 million gallons per day, but a 2004 SFPUC study predicted that by 2010, demand for water in San Francisco will be at 92.4 million gallons per day. Therefore, more well water will be drawn from an aquifer now used by Daly City and other communities just south of the city, and Golden Gate Park will be irrigated with recycled, purified sewage to be treated in a plant built in the park. Harrington says current water plans assume the city will grow by 72,000 residential units by the year 2030, which means if the need for more water becomes urgent, San Francisco could buy water from the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts, which also draw water from the Tuolumne.