CONSERVATION: Mountains to Metropolis

Mountains to Metropolis

San Francisco still remembers Juan Miguel Aguirre. In the raw mining town of 1848 he was the first to sell water to citizens who lacked a nearby spring or well. He barreled his water in Sausalito, barged it across the Golden Gate, packed it on burros to peddle through muddy streets for as much as $1.50 per gal. “Caramba!” would cry astonished Juan Miguel Aguirre if he could return to San Francisco next week to see one of the world’s great water systems begin pouring into the metropolis a colossal stream from a far-away mountain. Canyon. Across the State from San Francisco, in what is now Yosemite National Park, early travelers found a unique canyon, gouged from solid granite by eons of glacial grinding and the swift rush of the Tuolumne River. Indians who named the canyon “Hetch Hetchy” were gone before any white man thought to ask them what the strange words meant. More than half a century ago visionary San Franciscans, irked by the scarcity of their water supply, began to talk of a Hetch Hetchy reservoir. From the wild and inaccessible canyon 3,500 ft. above sea level, water would need no pumping on its course to the city. The knife-gash gorge at its outlet was ideal for damming. Thirty-three years ago this week San Francisco asked the U. S. Department of the Interior for permission to build in Yosemite Park. For a decade successive Secretaries of the Interior backed and filled on the Hetch Hetchy project. President Taft appointed a board of army engineers to study the technical problems involved. Optimistically San Francisco voted a $45,000,000 bond issue. The last legal barrier fell in 1913 when Congress gave its full consent. By then Hetch Hetchy was a year past its real turning point. In July 1912 Engineer John R. Freeman drew up what have remained the basic plans for the system. Few months later San Francisco got for its City Engineer a vigorous Irishman named Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy, already well known for his work in California and Hawaii. The War and work on Hetch Hetchy began together. But nothing was to stop the slow growth of the project through the next two decades. As time passed there were the usual impatient charges of waste, incompetence, delay. Engineer O’Shaughnessy parried these thrusts with Irish eloquence, plodded on with his immense, laborious job—cutting miles of roads, laying miles of pipeline, boring miles of tunnels, pouring thousands of tons of concrete. Trouble piled on trouble. In the Coast Range tunnel ground swelled and shifted. There were quicksands and subterranean springs. Methane gas gathered. By this week cost of financing had mounted to $100,000,000. But at last Hetch Hetchy Water Supply System was ready to fulfill its purpose. Piled behind O’Shaughnessy Dam in 7½-mile-long Hetch Hetchy reservoir lie 67,000,000,000 gal. of clean, sweet mountain water. Few miles to the northwest lies supplementary Lake Eleanor reservoir, holding 9,000,000,000 gal. The system will supply San Francisco at once with 60,000,000 gal. per day. In full flow the completed system will supply 400,000,000 gal. per day. The first planners did not foresee the vast potential electric power which would lie in Hetch Hetchy water’s rush down from the Sierras. But already the $7,000,000 Mocassin Power House has returned $15,000,000 in revenues, is expected to earn $2,000,000 per year. Engineer. Last week Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy sat at home in San Francisco awaiting his great day. Grey and 70, he had been on the shelf for two years as consulting engineer while younger men finished his job. When he started Hetch Hetchy and gave his name to the dam, the project was one of the most breath-taking in California. Since then, however, a great era of public works throughout the State has tended to cloud the fame of Engineer O’Shaughnessy’s handiwork. Los Angeles was to get water from Boulder Dam. The Golden Gate was being spanned. Another great bridge was working its way across San Francisco Bay. But on Oct. 28 Builder O’Shaughnessy knew that the eyes of State and nation would again be on Hetch Hetchy and its engineer. Then for the first time its waters were to reach their final goal. In his mind’s eye he could follow the first water along every foot of its course. Some of it would come from Hetch Hetchy, some from Lake Eleanor, to join at Early Intake 12 mi. below O’Shaughnessy Dam. There a concrete diversion dam would turn it for the 155-mi. drop to San Francisco. Under the Sierras it would flow through a 16-mi. tunnel. Farther on, it would hurtle from eight great nozzles against the waterwheels at Mocassin. Over the fields and vineyards of San Joaquin Valley it would course through a monster pipeline, then bore through the rocky Coast Range in the world’s longest tunnel —25 mi. Another pipeline would carry it 21 mi., crossing San Francisco Bay, another short tunnel into the city’s Crystal Springs Reservoir. Already Engineer O’Shaughnessy could hear the great shout which would go up when the first water gurgled through a 900-ft. open weir, foamed out through a classic water temple into the final reservoir. Space was being made nearby for 20,000 automobiles. Secretary of the Interior Ickes had promised to go out from Washington. Governor Merriam, Mayor Rossi, many another bigwig would be there. One of them would make a fine speech about the old engineer, hand him a gold medal. He would be very proud. One morning last week, 16 days before Hetch Hetchy Completion Celebration, a heart attack brought Death to Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy.