Hetch-Hetchy Water Project: Then & Now
The Hetch-Hetchy valley was initially a V shaped ravine that had been slowly carved out over time by the ancient Tuolumne River. After some glacial formations occurred during the last glacial period the valley was carved into what it appears as today around 10,000 years ago due to the melting of the glaciers. After the glaciers had finished melting they formed the alluvial flood plain that composes the valley’s floor. In comparison to the other similar valleys found in the region, the Hetch-Hetchy valley has much more round and smooth walls due to its higher abundance of glaciation. Before the valley was dammed and flooded, it was home to many different types of flora and animal life. It was also home to many Native American hunting and gathering tribes in the mid-1800s, however by the late 1880s the city of San Francisco already had its eye on the valley as a solution to its growing water system problems.
During the great earthquake of 1906, fires torched the city of San Francisco and it became very clear that the city needed to urgently update its inadequate water system. After a vicious battle with an environmental group known as the Sierra Club led by John Muir, the city of San Francisco was able to obtain the rights to dam the Tuolumne River creating a reservoir for them to have a more adequate water source. Because the area that was to be affected was within the region of a national park congress had to approve and President Woodrow Wilson had to sign the approved legislation before the project began.
Plans began and the Hetch-Hetchy water project was started in 1913 and completed in 1938. It’s goal was to deliver fresh drinking water to San Francisco and the greater bay area by ...
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Huber, N. King. "The Geologic Story of The Yosemite Valleys." United States Geological Survey. N.p., 13 Jan. 2004. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. .
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Huber, N. King. "The late Cenozoic evolution of the Tuolumne River, central Sierra Nevada, California." The late Cenozoic evolution of the Tuolumne River, central Sierra Nevada, California. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. .
Muir, John. "Hetch Hetchy Valley." Sierra Club Bulletin 6 (1912): 211-20.
The primary purpose of Friend dam is to help regulate the flow of San Joaquin into available uses of its environmental, wildlife, and farmer’s impacts. The dam controls the flow of water delivery where it needs authorization first before the schedule can release any delivery waters into canals, steam, and wild life habitats. There will be agreements and many protocols to do with it first to avoid unnecessary spilling. There are 5 release schedules which include quantity of water available, time water, flood control requirements, release schedules from storage reservoir above Millerton Lake, and water user requirements. These benefits of flood control, storage management, modification into Madera and Friant-Kern Canals, to stop salty water from abolishing thousands of lands in Sacramento and throughout San Joaquin Delta, as well as deliver masses of water into agricultural lands in 5other counties in the San Joaquin Valley.
In December 1936 the United States Department of the Interior authorized the Lower Colorado River Authority to construct a low dam at the site of an old crossing on the river known as Marshall Ford. Marshall Ford Dam was completed in 1941 through the collaboration of the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) of Texas. The original purpose of the dam was to prevent floods from devastating Austin, TX. The capital city had substandard heavy damage from previous floods since its establishment in 1846. Soon bureaucrats came together to create the Colorado River Project, wanting to create a series of dams along the Colorado River to create hydroelectric power and serve to control floods and droughts. With Buchanan dam well under way with a total of six planned Marshall Ford was the only dam designed primarily for flood control and the only dam in which USBR oversaw construction. With money scarce there was debate over the final height dam and it reservoir capacity. This issue resolves itself with the flood of 1938. Once completed Marshall Ford Dam would flood 65 miles of the Colorado to form Lake Travis, creating the largest of the seven reservoirs known as the Highland Lakes.
The one feature common to the Hoover Dam, The Mississippi river and the three gorges dam is that they all tried to control nature’s swings, specifically in the form of flooding. Before the Hoover dam was built, the Colorado river “used to flood spectacularly…but after 1900 the Colorado provoked a vehement response” (Pg 177). The response was simple, but large. The U.S. built several large dams, including the Hoover dam, on the Colorado to decrease its flooding and increase power and irrigation. Unfortunately, just as human control of the Colorado’s flooding increased, its organisms and habitats were detrimentally influenced, and the water became more and more salinated.
The negative aspects of Glen Canyon Dam greatly exceed the positive aspects. The dam’s hydroelectric power supply is only three percent of the total power used by the six states that are served by the facility. There is a surplus of power on the Colorado Plateau and with more and more power-plants being created in the western hemisphere, Glen Canyon Dam’s power is not needed (Living Rivers: What about the hydroelectric loss). Although the ‘lake’ contains twenty seven million acre feet of water, one and a half million acre feet of water are lost yearly due to evaporation and seepage into the sandstone banks surrounding the ‘lake’ (Living Rivers: What about the water supply?). The loss of that much “water represents millions, even billions of dollars” (Farmer 183). If the government were to employ more water efficient irrigation practices, as much as five million acre feet of water per year could be saved.
Yosemite and its history, young to old the story of an area of land that is doomed to be mined, forcibly stripped naked of its natural resources. In 1864 Yosemite land grant was signed into act by president Abraham Lincoln, the first area of land set aside for preservation and protection. Yosemite being a very important historical plot of land, some time ago president Theodore Roosevelt visited the park managing to disappear from the secret service with John Muir. Through the years the contrast of ideas between the industrialists and the preservationists have clashed, Yosemite’s history both interesting and mysterious but more importantly inevitable .
Mono Lake is a hypersaline, highly alkaline, hydrographically closed basin in which the only natural means of water export is through evaporation. The basin itself was carved out by faulting of tectonic plates that occurred atleast 500,000 years ago. Mono Basin contains up to 7,000 ft. of glacial, fluvial, lacustrine and volcanic deposits in a large structural depression formed in part by down-dropping along the Sierra Nevada fault (Pakiser 1976).
On May 31, 1889 4.8 billion gallons of water rushed down the Conemaugh Valley through Johnstown from the Conemaugh Reservoir. The flood killed over 2000 people and cause over 17 million dollars in in damage (today 17 million is equivalent to about 225 million dollars.) The South Fork Dam creating the reservoir created the problem; The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the dam between 1838 and 1853. The Pennsylvania railroads acquired shipping priority over canals; through this Pennsylvania sold the canal and reservoir to the Pennsylvania Rail Road. Not having a need for the reservoir the Pennsylvanian rail road sold the land to speculators who wanted to build a resort. The speculators included Henry Clay Frick, Benjamin Ruff, and Andrew Carnegie. These men built a very exclusive resort and named it The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. At one point the club became known as the most exclusive club in The United States. Included in the building of the resort Frick wanted the dam to be lowered to allow for a road to be built on top. Lower dams could not hold excess water just in case the reservoir flooded.
Eckel, Edwin B., ed. Nevada Test Site. Memoir 110 Boulder, CO: The Geological Society of America, 1968
Rising from the Plains by John McPhee is about an influential geologist, John David Love, interpreting the geologic history of Wyoming. The surface area of Wyoming has been subjected to many geological formations from the rise of the Rocky Mountains through the Laramide Orogeny in late Cretaceous time to the deep structural basin known as the Jackson Hole with rock dating back to the Precambrian period. Throughout each time period of the Earth’s history, the surface of Wyoming has experienced significant changes that have affected the physical landscape, as well as living organisms, even to this day. In this story John David Love shares his knowledge of the geologic history of Wyoming with John McPhee as they travel across Wyoming taking in the vastness that the landscape of Wyoming presents.
2000 An Introduction to Grand Canyon Prehistory. Pp 6-7. Grand Canyon, Ariz.: Grand Canyon Association.
Blakey, R. C. (1996). Geologic history of western us. Informally published manuscript, Northern Arizona Univ, Flagstaff, AZ, Retrieved from http://www.jan.ucc.nau.edu
The state offered to sell the canal, the railroad company bought it for the right of ways yet had no need to maintain the dam, which due to neglect, broke for the first time in 1862. McCullough stresses that man was responsible for the dam and its weaknesses nearly thirty years before the great flood as he explains how the initial repair work was carried out by unqualified people and how the discharge pipes were blocked up.... ... middle of paper ... ... McCullough makes a firm argument for the responsibility of man, and asserts the blame on the necessary people, therefore I feel he makes a fair and accurate assertion which I would agree with.
Rogers, W. B. and Rogers, H. D., 1843, On the physical structure of the Appalachian Chain as exemplifying the laws which have regulated the elevation of great mountain chains generally: Transactions of American Geologists and Naturalists for 1840-1842, p. 474-531.
"The Future of Hydropower." Macalester College: Private Liberal Arts College. Web. 03 Oct. 2011. .
"Water Crisis & Solutions." Water Crisis & Solutions. Water For People, 2011. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. http://www.waterforpeople.org/extras/crisis/water-crisis-and-solutions.html