03-14-2022, 08:46 AM
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy by Robert W. Righter
The subtitle for the book is "America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism"
This is the definitive book about how the damming of Hetch Hetchy came about. It's a very in-depth look and very entertaining. I learned more than I needed and it was a bit tiresome towards the end, but I did enjoy the story and I'm glad I read it. I learned some fascinating things about the fight and the people involved. Righter does a good job of not positioning people as villains. Everybody thinks they are doing what is right from their point of view. I was already to hate SF Mayor Phelan for starting the project to dam the valley but he had his reasons. It's amazing some of the things that went on. My favorite is that Phelan lost the water rights to the valley because he didn't keep them up (maintaining rights is a big theme) and somebody came in and basically took the claim. The city then had to pay this person millions for the claim. The other big story was they rushed to build the dam and then didn't take any water from it for another ten years. Basically they used the water to produce electricity. One of the arguments for the dam was that a nice lake would be much more scenic than that swamp full of mosquitos.
The subtitle for the book is "America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism"
This is the definitive book about how the damming of Hetch Hetchy came about. It's a very in-depth look and very entertaining. I learned more than I needed and it was a bit tiresome towards the end, but I did enjoy the story and I'm glad I read it. I learned some fascinating things about the fight and the people involved. Righter does a good job of not positioning people as villains. Everybody thinks they are doing what is right from their point of view. I was already to hate SF Mayor Phelan for starting the project to dam the valley but he had his reasons. It's amazing some of the things that went on. My favorite is that Phelan lost the water rights to the valley because he didn't keep them up (maintaining rights is a big theme) and somebody came in and basically took the claim. The city then had to pay this person millions for the claim. The other big story was they rushed to build the dam and then didn't take any water from it for another ten years. Basically they used the water to produce electricity. One of the arguments for the dam was that a nice lake would be much more scenic than that swamp full of mosquitos.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm