The Dam That Keeps San Francisco From Running Dry

It was 5:12 a.m. on a Wednesday and the sun had not yet risen over the East Bay hills when a 7.9 earthquake struck -- its epicenter just 2 miles west of San Francisco's Ocean Beach.

This was April 18, 1906.

The next day, three San Francisco newspapers -- the Call, the Chronicle and the Examiner -- published a joint edition. Its front page carried this top headline: "Earthquake and Fire: San Francisco In Ruins."

"Whole City Is Ablaze," said another headline.

"Death and destruction have been the fate of San Francisco," the paper reported.

"The water supply was entirely cut off," it said.

In 1907, the U.S. Geological Survey published a series of reports that explained what happened.

"The greatest loss in the city of San Francisco was principally the result of the fire, which was rendered uncontrollable owing to the wrecking of the water-supply system by the earthquake," said one of the reports.

"The water supply of San Francisco, as compared with that of other cities, was fairly good and had a rated capacity of 36,000,000 gallons per day," said the report. "The failure to control the fire by reason of the crippling of the water supply was not due to the failure of the system outside of the city, but to the breaks in the distributing mains within the city, which rendered unavailable about 80,000,000 gallons of water stored within the city limits."

"The numerous fires that broke out all over the city were doubtless caused by the collapse of chimneys and the break of electric connections," said the report. "These fires were at first confined to the territory south of Market Street, and it is said that by 8 a.m. on the morning of April 18 more than fifty fires were recorded. The early failure of the water mains rendered the city helpless and placed it at the mercy of the flames, the fury of which for three days threatened to complete one of the greatest disasters of recent years and to obliterate one of the most beautiful cities in the country."

One of the USGS reports contained a section headlined "General Lessons of the Earthquake and Fire."

"The importance of proper construction and distribution of the water mains in districts liable to earthquakes is demonstrated by the fact that the greatest damage in San Francisco, fully 85 percent of the total, was by fire," it said. "The action of the earthquake in starting the fires which grew to a great conflagration seems insignificant compared to the breaking of the water mains, which left the city defenseless against the flames."

Although water distribution -- not supply -- was the central problem leading to this disastrous 1906 fire, San Francisco's rapidly growing population in that era soon did lead to a supply problem.

Voters in San Francisco then demonstrated their desire to secure more water for their city.

According to a timeline published by the National Park Service, the possibility of damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite to create a reservoir for San Francisco had been under consideration since at least 1899. In that year, says the timeline, "John Quinton of the U.S. Geological Survey issues a report mentioning that a reservoir in the Hetch Hetchy Valley could serve as an unfailing water source for San Francisco County."

Sierra Club President John Muir emerged as a leading opponent of this proposal.

"John Muir and the preservationist's efforts to save his mountain temple sparked the first national debate about preserving a natural area and raised new awareness about the country's natural resources," says the National Park Service timeline.

In January 1908 (as this column has noted before), Muir wrote an essay in the Sierra Club Bulletin in opposition to building a reservoir at Hetch Hetchy. "In these ravaging money-mad days monopolizing San Francisco capitalists are now doing their best to destroy the Yosemite Park, the most wonderful of all our great mountain national parks," he said.

"These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature," said Muir, "and instead of lifting their eyes to the mountains, lift them to dams and town skyscrapers."

On Jan. 14, 1910, San Franciscans voted to move forward with this water project that Muir opposed. "Hetch-Hetchy Water Plan Carried Overwhelmingly," read a headline in the San Francisco Examiner. (This writer's grandfather, Dr. John Degnan, who was born and raised in Yosemite Valley, eventually managed this project's hospital.)

"The practically unanimous vote by which the bonds for the Tuolumne water system were carried is an evidence of the seriousness of the water situation in San Francisco," said the paper. "They have been brought to this unanimity by the fact that San Francisco is suffering in its growth for want of water. They have realized by experience that the city cannot grow as it should without a pure and abundant supply of this necessity."

Was this a smart vote? In 2023, the San Francisco Chronicle reported: "About 85% of the water supply for 2.7 million people in San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo and Alameda counties comes from Sierra Nevada snowmelt stored in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir."

Following the recent disastrous fires in Los Angeles County, it is likely there will be a push to build - and fill - more reservoirs in California.

The modern-day John Muirs will oppose this. They will be wrong again.

Terence P. Jeffrey is an editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation. To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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