The State - News from May 13, 1988

Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel’s proposal to drain the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park “makes as much sense as damming the Grand Canyon,” U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) said. Wilson’s office announced that the senator had written to the chairman of a key House subcommittee urging that the body reject Hodel’s request for $600,000 to study the idea. Wilson wrote Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.), chairman of the Interior Appropriations subcommittee, to state his “unequivocal opposition” to financing the study, which would examine the feasibility of dismantling the 75-year-old O’Shaughnessy Dam and draining the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which supplies water and hydroelectric power to San Francisco and other Northern California communities. “Even though the thought of restoring this once-pristine valley to its original splendor has some aesthetic appeal,” Wilson wrote, “the practical consequences of such an action are mind-boggling.”