SF's precious tap water

[Guest guest]

S.F.'s tasty tap water about to get a little murkier

By Matt Smith

published: May 20, 2009

We San Franciscans like to fancy ourselves unique, but most such claims don't

hold water. We had 1960s counterculture movements, yes, but the thick of that

action was at faraway events such as the Chicago Seven trial and the Stonewall

riots. San Francisco is an unusually beautiful city, sure, but no more so than

Truckee, Santa Cruz, or New York. One thing we have had that no other similarly

sized city did was unusually pure water. Melted snow and glacial streams feed

the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and the water then piped across the Central Valley

and into city faucets and showerheads is so clean and delicious that it's also

sold in bottles.

But that distinction could soon end thanks to a watershed agreement recently

approved between San Francisco and the more than two dozen rural and suburban

cities, water districts, and utilities that draw water from the Hetch Hetchy

system.

The new 25-year deal closes an epoch of seemingly limitless, perfectly pure

water for San Franciscans. Thanks to regional growth and environmental concerns

about the ecology of the Tuolumne River, the agreement will force San

Franciscans, who consume mere drops of water per capita compared to people in

other cities, to make do with even less. The new era of scarcity also means San

Francisco will have to increase the amount of water the city obtains from local

wells, which can contain trace contaminants such as manganese and iron, albeit

at levels so low they don't threaten health.

" San Franciscans think we're members of the Sierra Club, and take this great

water, flush it once, and send it out into the bay, " says Ed Harrington, general

manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. " Most people in the

world don't get to do that. Now, we're talking about, one, reuse of water. And,

two, bringing some of that water out of the ground. "

Some local residents fear Harrington's negotiating team has sold the city down

the river by guaranteeing an average of 92 gallons per day to individual water

users outside the city, while setting a goal of merely 54 gallons per day for

San Franciscans (down from the current 57 gallons).

" We're not going to have enough water, " says Joan Girardot, former president of

the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, who heads the group's water task

force. " This is going to be a huge issue a few years down the road. "

 

Read more at http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-05-20/news/take-me-to-the-river/

 

On 6/20/09, the California Historical Society will hold its annual meeting with

a focus on California and Water. Check out

http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/cal/index.html