“Would you like some Hetch Hetchy water?” your waiter might say. San Francisco has long associated its water supply with Hetch Hetchy, but the city’s water comes from the mighty Tuolumne River system – Hetch Hetchy is just where some of that water has been stored over the last century. So if we take the water out of Hetch Hetchy, do we lose the water that San Francisco needs to survive and prosper?

No. San Francisco and other Bay Area communities will continue to receive a reliable supply of high-quality water from the Tuolumne River after Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is drained and the valley returned to the trusteeship of Yosemite National Park. Here’s how that can easily be achieved.

Hetch Hetchy is only one of nine reservoirs that comprise the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s water system. Although Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is the most well-known, it stores less than 25% of the system’s water. San Francisco’s water-bank in Don Pedro Reservoir, downstream on the Tuolumne River, holds twice as much water as Hetch Hetchy.