Wednesday October 7, 2026
San Francisco Chronicle —
The Sierra Club is suing the city of San Francisco’s water department, claiming officials are manipulating water data to justify bigger water grabs for the city – and causing unnecessary harm to the environment, and inflating customer rates.
The suit, filed last week in San Francisco Superior Court, calls for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to revise its state-mandated Urban Water Management Plan to reflect more modest water needs, notably from the Tuolumne River at Yosemite National Park, where the bulk of the city’s water comes from.
The Oakland-based Sierra Club and other environmental groups have long accused San Francisco of holding back too much water at its Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite. They say the excess storage comes at the expense of struggling salmon runs and a drying foothill landscape. The Tuolumne River, because of water draws by the city and others, averages just 21% of its natural flow during peak run-off season.