Hetch Hetchy: Undoing a Great American Mistake

by Kenneth Brower

''The environmental movement as we know it was forged in the fight against Hetch Hetchy Dam. No previous debate over the American landscape had so engaged and enraged the American public. The Sierra Club and other opponents helped stir this sentiment and their campaign to preserve Hetch Hetchy became the prototypical environmental campaign.''
From Hetch Undoing a Great American Mistake In the 1920's the thirsty city of San Francisco reached deep into Yosemite National Park to build the O'Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River, diverting one-third of the river's water and flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley, said at the time to be as magnificent as Yosemite Valley itself. The water that flows through tunnels and pipelines into the households of San Francisco is steeped in the resulting heated debates, which began over a century ago and burn to this day. Examining the stunning engineering feat that the dam represented to some when it was constructed, as well as the heartbreak of others, such as John Muir, over the loss of a valley as radiant as any in Yosemite National Park, award-winning nature writer Kenneth Brower's Hetch Undoing a Great American Mistake is a tribute to the men and women whose lives were shaped by those waters, and the wild landscape that still exists beneath them. Alongside A State of Change artist and historical ecologist Laura Cunningham's pictorial reimagining of a drained Hetch Hetchy landscape over the course of two, ten, a hundred years, Brower envisages the species-by-species reclamation of the valley by its native flora and fauna as wildness flourishes again. Offering viable alternatives for restoration, Brower's Hetch Hetchy is both an exploration of the pitched battle over an environmental tragedy and an inspiring reverie of a possible future.

118 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2013

About the author

Kenneth Brower is an American nonfiction writer. He is the oldest son of the late environmentalist David R. Brower.

He is best known for his many books about the environment, national parks, and natural places, many of them in hundreds of libraries and by major publishers, including several titles in the series The Earth's Wild Places published by the Friends of the Earth in the 1970s. His most widely read book, on Yosemite, is in over 1200 worldCat libraries. Many of his books have been published by The National Geographic Society. Several of his books have been translated into Japanese, German, Spanish, and Hebrew.

He is also known for being the author of The Starship and the Canoe, a comparison of the lives of scientist Freeman Dyson and his 'rebellious' son George Dyson.
(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

So wonderful that this book is here--putting a light on the tragic loss of a beautiful valley.