Disputes and Controversies
The Raker Act specified that because the source of the water and power was on public land, no private profit could be derived from the development. One local weekly newspaper says the city of San Francisco is in violation of the law, but according to Peter Byrne, "the plain language of the Raker Act itself and experts who are familiar with the act (and have no stake in city politics) all agree: The city of San Francisco is not in violation of the Raker Act." Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior in the late 1930s, said there was a violation of the Raker Act, but he and the city reached a final solution in 1945.
The Sierra Club currently advocates removing the dam, but the city of San Francisco wants to keep it because the reservoir currently serves 2.4 million people, including parts of San Mateo County, Alameda County, and Silicon Valley. Deconstructing the dam would cost $3 billion-$9.8 billion, according to a study ordered by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In 1987, the idea of razing the O'Shaughnessy Dam gained an adherent in Don Hodel, then Secretary of the Department of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan. Hodel called for a study of the effect of tearing down the dam. The National Park Service concluded that two years after draining the valley, grasses would cover most of its floor and within 10 years, clumps of cone-bearing trees and some oaks would take root. Within 50 years, vegetative cover would be complete except for exposed rocky areas. In this unmanaged scenario, where nature is left to take hold in the valley, eventually a forest would grow, rather than the meadow being restored. However, the same NPS study also finds that with intensive management, an outcome in which "the entire valley would appear much as it did before construction of the reservoir" is feasible.
Some observers, such as Carl Pope (Director of the Sierra Club), stated that Hodel had political motives in proposing the study. The imputed motive was to divide the environmental movement: to see residents of the strongly Democratic city of San Francisco coming out against an environmental issue. Dianne Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco at the time, said in a Los Angeles Times story in 1987: "All this is for an expanded campground?... It's dumb, dumb, dumb." Hodel, now retired, is still a strong proponent of restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley and now-Senator Feinstein is still strongly against restoration. The George W. Bush administration proposed allocating $7 million to studying the removal of the dam in the 2007 budget. Dianne Feinstein opposed this allocation, saying, "I will do all I can to make sure it isn't included in the final bill. We're not going to remove this dam, and the funding is unnecessary."
In a November 2012 ballot, the citizens of San Francisco voted down a proposition to require the city to spend $8 million to study how the flooded valley could be drained and restored to its former state, and replaced with alternative sources of water and hydroelectric power.
Read more about this topic: O'Shaughnessy Dam