Thursday April 25, 2024
The Modesto Bee —
Several environmental groups say San Francisco’s drought risk is overstated and asked the city on Tuesday to rethink how its uses the Tuolumne River.
They said chinook salmon and other wildlife suffer from the current operations, especially the river stretch in and near Modesto.
At a meeting of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the groups urged more conservation and wastewater recycling. The agency responded that these “single-issue activists” do not understand the city’s needs.
San Francisco secured rights in 1913 to about an eighth of the Tuolumne, which arises at about 13,000 feet in Yosemite National Park. Most of the water diversion is at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, built just inside the western park boundary to the dismay of early preservationists.