The Debate over Hetch-Hetchy: Federal Power, National Lands, Conservation v. Preservation, and Urban Growth

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1 P a g e 1 HIST 3322: The U.S. West in the 20 th Century Summer I / 2014 Reaction Paper #3: Due Thursday, June 19 th The Debate over Hetch-Hetchy: Federal Power, National Lands, Conservation v. Preservation, and Urban Growth Instructions 1. Summarize the arguments for and against damming the valley. 2. Explain the differences between conservation (Pinchot) and preservation (Muir) 3. What are the sources of power (federal, economic, political, cultural) in this debate? 4. How does this debate reflect the main themes of the Progressive Era (as discussed in class)? Giving a Dam: Congress Debates Hetch-Hetchy The first great American conservation movement was born during the Progressive Era out of the concern that industrial growth and urban development threatened to extinguish America s wilderness. The era s most controversial environmental issue was the five-year struggle over federal approval for the flooding of a remote corner of federally-owned land in California s Yosemite National Park to build the Hetch Hetchy dam. San Francisco, rebuilding after the devastating 1906 earthquake, believed the dam was necessary to meet its burgeoning needs for reliable supplies of water and electricity. In their 1913 testimony before the House Committee on Public Lands, former San Francisco Mayor James Phelan and Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief Forester of the U.S. and the most noted conservationist of his generation, put the utilitarian needs of San Francisco s citizens above the aesthetic and moral advantages of leaving Yosemite a pristine wilderness. Congress chose management over aesthetics, voting to allow the Hetch Hetchy dam on federal land. The CHAIRMAN: [Scott Ferris, Congressman from Oklahoma.] In deference to Mr. [Gifford] Pinchot s wishes, as he desires to leave the city, he will be permitted to address the committee at this time if there is no objection. Mr. PINCHOT: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I presume that you very seldom have the opportunity of passing upon any measure before the Committee on the Public Lands which has been so thoroughly thrashed out as this one. This question has been up now, I should say, more than 10 years, and the reasons for and against the proposition have not only been discussed over and over again, but a great deal of the objections which could be composed have been composed, until finally there remains simply the one question of the objection of the Spring Valley Water Co. I understand that the much more important objection of the Tuolumne irrigation districts have been overcome. There is, I understand, objection on the part of other irrigators, but that does not go to the question of using the water, but merely to the distribution of the water. So we come now face to face with the perfectly clean question of what is the best use to which this water that flows out of the Sierras can be put. As we all know, there is no use of water that is higher than the domestic use. Then, if there is, as the engineers tell us, no other source of supply that is anything like so reasonably available as this one; if this is the best, and, within reasonable limits of cost, the only means of supplying San Francisco with water, we come straight to the question of whether the advantage of leaving this valley in a state of nature is greater than the advantage of using it for the benefit of the city of San Francisco. Now, the fundamental principle of the whole conservation policy is that of use, to take every part of the land and its resources and put it to that use in which it will best serve the most people, and I think there can be no question at all but that in this case we have an instance in which all weighty considerations

2 P a g e 2 demand the passage of the bill.. I think that the men who assert that it is better to leave a piece of natural scenery in its natural condition have rather the better of the argument, and I believe if we had nothing else to consider than the delight of the few men and women who would yearly go into the Hetch Hetchy Valley, then it should be left in its natural condition. But the considerations on the other side of the question to my mind are simply overwhelming, and so much so that I have never been able to see that there was any reasonable argument against the use of this water supply by the city of San Francisco.... Mr. [John] RAKER: [California Congressman] Taking the scenic beauty of the park as it now stands, and the fact that the valley is sometimes swamped along in June and July, is it not a fact that if a beautiful dam is put there, as is contemplated, and as the picture is given by the engineers, with the roads contemplated around the reservoir and with other trails, it will be more beautiful than it is now, and give more opportunity for the use of the park? Mr. PINCHOT: Whether it will be more beautiful, I doubt, but the use of the park will be enormously increased. I think there is no doubt about that. Mr. RAKER: In other words, there will be more beauty accessible than there is now? Mr. PINCHOT: Much more beauty will be accessible than now. Mr. RAKER: And by putting in roads and trails the Government, as well as the citizens of the Government, will get more pleasure out of it than at the present time? Mr. PINCHOT: You might say from the standpoint of enjoyment of beauty and the greatest good to the greatest number, they will be conserved by the passage of this bill, and there will be a great deal more use of the beauty of the park than there is now. Greatest good to the greatest number, they will be conserved by the passage of this bill, and there will be a great deal more use of the beauty of the park than there is now. Mr. RAKER: Have you seen Mr. John Muir s criticism of the bill? You know him? Mr. PINCHOT: Yes, sir; I know him very well. He is an old and a very good friend of mine. I have never been able to agree with him in his attitude toward the Sierras for the reason that my point of view has never appealed to him at all. When I became Forester and denied the right to exclude sheep and cows from the Sierras, Mr. Muir thought I had made a great mistake, because I allowed the use by an acquired right of a large number of people to interfere with what would have been the utmost beauty of the forest. In this case I think he has unduly given away to beauty as against use. [deleted sections] The CHAIRMAN: Mr. Phelan, please state what official connection you have had with the city of San Francisco. Mr. PHELAN: I was mayor of San Francisco for five years, my term ending in The CHAIRMAN: Are you connected with the administration in any way now?

3 P a g e 3 Mr. PHELAN: No, sir; except as a member of this commission which has been sent to Washington, appointed by the mayor of San Francisco, to represent in part the city of San Francisco in this water investigation. I am also a library trustee, but the water investigation has nothing to do with books. The mayor asked me to appear because I am familiar with the needs of the city of San Francisco, where I was born and of which I have been ever since a resident, and because during my incumbency of the office of mayor the first filings were made on this Hetch Hetchy Valley and on the Tuolumne River. I have also participated in the several hearings which have been had on this subject I will only emphasize the fact that the needs of San Francisco are pressing and urgent. San Francisco is expanding with tremendous rapidity due to the development of the interior of California and to the prospect of the early opening of the canal and the building of the exposition, and already, notwithstanding the threat of a water famine, the outlying district, which never before was developed, is being cut up into suburban tracts. A large number of our population has been lost to Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley, by reason of the fact that we have never had adequate facilities either of transportation or of water supply to meet what would otherwise be a demand for residences on the peninsula. There are disadvantages in crossing the bay. So San Francisco, the chief Federal city on the Pacific coast, asks the Federal Government for assistance in this matter by grant and not by money. It has obligated itself to pay $70,000,000 for a water supply. We have endeavored to satisfy the needs of the $70,000,000 for a water supply. We have endeavored to satisfy the needs of the irrigationists in good faith, as well as the local water monopoly, and we come this year to Washington, I think, with the good will of those heretofore opposed, possibly with the exception of the gentlemen who are devoted to the preservation of the beauties of nature. As Californians, we rather resent gentlemen from different parts of the country outside of California telling us that we are invading the beautiful natural resources of the State or in any way marring or detracting from them. We have a greater pride than they in the beauties of California, in the valleys, in the big trees, in the rivers, and in the high mountains. We have the highest mountain in the United States in California, Mount Whitney, 15,000 feet above the sea, as we have the lowest land, in Death Valley, 300 feet below the sea. We have the highest tree known in the world, and the oldest tree. Its history goes back 2,000 years By constructing a dam at this very narrow gorge in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, about 700 feet across, we create, not a reservoir, but a lake, because Mr. Freeman, who has studied the situation in Manchester or Birmingham, where there is a similar case, has shown that by planting trees or vines over the dam, the idea of a dam, the appearance of a dam, is entirely lost; so, coming upon it, it will look like an emerald gem in the mountains; and one of the few things in which California is deficient, especially in the Sierras, is lakes, and in this way we will contribute, in a large measure, to the scenic grandeur and beauty of California.. Mr. [James] GRAHAM: [Illinois, Congressman] In that they are mistaken by a dam site? Mr. PHELAN. They are mistaken by a dam site, and after it is constructed, as somebody said, not wishing to be outdone in profanity, It will be the damdest finest sight you ever saw. [deleted sections] To provide for the little children, men, and women of the 800,000 population who swarm the shores of San Francisco Bay is a matter of much greater importance than encouraging the few who, in solitary loneliness, will sit on the peak of the Sierras loafing around the throne of the God of nature and singing

4 P a g e 4 His praise. A benign father loves his children above all things. There is no comparison between the highest use of the water the domestic supply and the mere scenic value of the mountains. When you decide that affirmatively, I think there is nothing left to be said. That is all. [sections deleted] Mr. LA FOLLETTE[Washington Congressman].. If I had my way about it, they would build the dam immediately as high as they could, to store every gallon of water flowing there.... I can not believe that the flooding of 1,500 acres will destroy all that vast area of scenery. I think if they go in there to see it and if anything is said derogatory to the dam, their attention should be called to the fact that the water is required for the irrigation of thousands of acres of land, and is also required to meet the domestic and economic needs of a great city, and when they come to realize that I should think their aesthetic taste could stand a little shock. House Committee on the Public Lands, Hetch Hetchy Dam Site, 63rd Cong., 1st sess. (25 28 June 1913; 7 July 1913), (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), 25 29, , , Reprinted in Roderick Nash, The Call of the Wild, (New York: George Brazilier, 1970), Dam Hetch Hetchy! : John Muir Contests the Hetch-Hetchy Dam Preservationist and Sierra Club founder John Muir did not testify before Congress, but he argued against the Hetch Hetchy plan in this excerpt from his 1912 book, The Yosemite. Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain, common, rock-bound meadow, as many who have not seen it seem to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of Nature s rarest and most precious mountain temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life, whether leaning back in repose or standing erect in thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, their brows in the sky, their feet set in the groves and gay flowery meadows, while birds, bees, and butterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the air into music things frail and fleeting and types of permanence meeting here and blending to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her. Sad to say, this most precious and sublime feature of the Yosemite National Park, one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace and health of the people, is in danger of being dammed and made into a reservoir to help supply San Francisco with water and light, thus flooding it from wall to wall and burying its gardens and groves one or two hundred feet deep. This grossly destructive commercial scheme has long been planned and urged (though water as pure and abundant can be got from sources outside of the people s park, in a dozen different places), because of the comparative cheapness of the dam and of the territory which it is sought to divert from the great uses to which it was dedicated in the Act of 1890 establishing the Yosemite National Park. The making of gardens and parks goes on with civilization all over the world, and they increase both in size and number as their value is recognized. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks the

5 P a g e 5 Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. Nature s sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world. Nevertheless, like anything else worthwhile, from the very beginning, however well guarded, they have always been subject to attack by despoiling gain-seekers and mischief-makers of every degree from Satan to Senators, eagerly trying to make everything immediately and selfishly commercial, with schemes disguised in smug-smiling philanthropy, industriously, shampiously crying, Conservation, conservation, panutilization, that man and beast may be fed and the dear Nation made great. Thus long ago a few enterprising merchants utilized the Jerusalem temple as a place of business instead of a place of prayer, changing money, buying and selling cattle and sheep and doves; and earlier still; the first forest reservation, including only one tree, was likewise despoiled. Ever since the establishment of the Yosemite National Park, strife has been going on around its borders and I suppose this will go on as part of the universal battle between right and wrong, however much its wild beauty destroyed.... That anyone would try to destroy Hetch Hetchy seems; incredible; but sad experience shows that there are people good enough and bad enough for anything. The proponents of the dam scheme bring forward a lot of bad arguments to prove that the only righteous thing to do with the people s parks is to destroy them bit by bit... Their arguments are curiously like those of the devil, devised for the destruction of the first garden.... These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man. Source: John Muir, The Yosemite (New York: Century, 1912), , Reprinted in Roderick Nash, The American Environment: Readings in The History of Conservation (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1968).