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Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Bee #28770 10/28/12 10:27 AM
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Bee: What happens when a debater takes a quote out of context, or only includes a partial quote in order to characterize it as misleading?

The full quote of the second factual finding of Prop F that SN quoted from is:

"The primary source of water for the City of San Francisco is the Tuolomne River. Many people believe the city's primary water source is the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park because the system is called the Hetch Hetchy system. In fact, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is just one of nine reservoirs that store water for San Francisco." [emphasis added]

What the partial quote left out is a very important piece: the distinction between the water and the storage tank. In draining HH, SF does NOT lose the water. The replacement process is one of finding storage capacity only. Difficult, maybe, bit a very different matter from losing the water itself in addition to the storage capacity.

Not to mention that the complete quote is 100% factually correct. And the irrigation water for Turlock Irrigation District etc is just as important and real as the SF municipal supply

I could run through similar problems with every single one of the Attachment A rebuttals that SN linked to, but the greater point is this. In any debate, "misleading" is the epithet cast by each side at the perfectly accurate statements of the other that support the wrong conclusion.

Case in point is Bee's concern about what it would cost to replace the HH hydro with dirty power. That assumes that the hydro couldn't be replaced with other clean renewable power. There is no reason for that assumption, other than the "misleading" statements of the opponents. In fact, such renewables are in development now, and will be available on a massive scale well before 2035.

Every argument and factual assertion is misleading if it leads to the conclusion you don't want others to reach. As such, calling something "misleading" is a pretty useless bit of rhetoric. The fact that I consider something misleading is trivial compared to the actual specific merits of whatever argument I am dealing with. And "lies": that's the strongest epithet of all, and really demands specific identification and backup. I haven't seen an example of that in this discussion, although the accusation has been flung with some abandon.

So SN has done us a great service by pointing at least to a specific document that articulates the source and basis of these assertions of lies and misleading statements. That document itself, however (which is apparently an advocacy piece by or defending the SF PUC, but one would like to know) is guilty of at least as much sophistry as it accuses Prop F of relying on. And of course it deals only with the relatively petty distractions of the findings preamble of the proposition, most of which are a distraction from the real issue; would it be a good idea to have a plan.




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Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
saltydog #28773 10/28/12 11:38 AM
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Jumping to the subject of "lies" -- usually, the two panels selected to present their points are both groups of well-informed experts, so people do not usually risk sinking their whole presentation with outright falsehoods (it is too easy to get caught, and once that happens, the audience -- who votes for the winner -- becomes too skeptical to be won back over)

The point that Salty brings up -- half-quotes, omitted info, etc. -- happens all of the time, and a lot of it gets past the audience (the moderator in this case is not a fact-checker,rather, he stricly enforces the time contraints and assigns the designated speakers for each go-around....very different from the free-for-alls that the presidential debates have become) The opposing panel does not have enough alotted timne to spend on both fact checking and their own program. A lot of weight is placed on the quality of the audience, and it is VERY annoying when the "wrong" side wins (read: he who spun the facts more adroitly!)



The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.
Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Bee #28977 11/05/12 11:15 AM
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Recycled Water in San Francisco Starts on Golf Course
First recycled water project now online. More to come. Things are moving forward without the $8 million Prop F plan to plan on planning.

This is just one of many better projects to focus on before draining the reservoir and losing so much clean hydroelectric power.

For those still on the fence, I recommend a hike around the lake to or beyond Wapama Falls or Rancheria Falls. Please describe what is so wrong with this ecosystem that we need a massive dam $10 billion removal project to solve it. There's no way a dam would be built there today of course, but is it really practical to reverse what was decided 100 years ago, and then raised even taller.

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Steve C #28984 11/05/12 07:12 PM
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Removing the dam is an act of symbolism reinforcing the dedication of preservation in our national parks.

I feel the same way about things like the Roman Colosseum. Sure it's old and it's history but it was a place of terrible decadence and horrible things took place there. Tear it down as a symbolic gesture that we want to move beyond the decadent past into a more prosperous future. But then again no one seems to want that type of future.

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
RoguePhotonic #28985 11/05/12 08:17 PM
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Originally Posted By: RoguePhotonic


I feel the same way about things like the Roman Colosseum. Sure it's old and it's history but it was a place of terrible decadence and horrible things took place there. Tear it down as a symbolic gesture that we want to move beyond the decadent past into a more prosperous future. But then again no one seems to want that type of future.


Tear down Monticello -- Jefferson was a slave owner!! Burn the White House! Nuke Germany -- ( too many buildings/locations where atrocities took place to single them out)

Oh, gawd, sorry people: I lived walking distance from the Colosseum/Forum/Domus Agustana...only a person who has never set foot outside this country could propose such ludicracy!

*shaking head and laughing*

I cannot thank you enough for the entertainment value offered by concepts such is the one mentioned above!!!!

Sierra Nevada, I implore you to step back in before this thread is lost forever


The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.
Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Steve C #28998 11/06/12 06:10 PM
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I'm not sure how stepping outside this country has anything to do with the position. Seeing it in person is not going to change my mind just like the fact that having been to Hetch Hetchy and hiking around it does not change my mind to remove the dam.

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Bee #28999 11/06/12 06:17 PM
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Bee, you speak the truth. The Roman Colosseum had been stripped of much of its beautiful stone work a long time ago, but not for eco-reasons; many Roman homes were built from the stone work and wood.

Where do we usually go to see history? Europe! Because Europeans revere their history, and here we can't seem to wait to rip something down in order to build something new and shiny.

What would be the point of tearing down Hetch-Hetchy? SF would seek its water elsewhere anyway. Besides, as has already been mentioned on this topic, it would take a long time for that valley to regain any of its former natural beauty - if ever.


Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
RoguePhotonic #29000 11/06/12 06:41 PM
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Originally Posted By: RoguePhotonic
I'm not sure how stepping outside this country has anything to do with the position. Seeing it in person is not going to change my mind just like the fact that having been to Hetch Hetchy and hiking around it does not change my mind to remove the dam.


See Bob West's post; I could not have said it better.

Thanks for getting it, Bob. BTW, I used to bee a tour guide in Italy (hence, my sensitivity to the subject!) One of the biggest culprits who filched marble from the Colosseum was.....Michaelangelo! Experts have sampled and dated the marble used on his sculptures throughout Italy, and an overwhelming majority of the material came from the Colosseum.

Sorry for highjacking the thread, I had to offer an antidote for the cultural blasphemy being set forth.


The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.
Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Bee #29002 11/06/12 07:38 PM
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If Prop F goes down, we could find another area we could restore to its natural state of beauty.

How about Cape Cod?

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Steve C #29004 11/06/12 09:06 PM
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Quote:
it would take a long time for that valley to regain any of its former natural beauty - if ever.


I don't think it would take that long. The walls and trees returning will take awhile but the ground floor would be prime for grass to take hold in a year or two. Then it will be a beautiful garden in the right season.

Nature will always find a way to make itself beautiful. We could not stop it by nuking the living crap out of it and you think a little water will defeat it?

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
QITNL #29011 11/07/12 06:10 AM
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What a great idea! Cape Cod does seems to have enough problems at home to tackle without trying to advise Californians:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/us/18nitrogen.html


Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Bob West #29012 11/07/12 06:43 AM
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It's decided. Prop F went down in a landslide.

77% against it.

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
SierraNevada #29013 11/07/12 07:28 AM
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Thanks for the update; it's good news! Looks like most people in S.F. were smart enough to realize the folly of Prop F.

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
QITNL #29019 11/07/12 03:31 PM
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Originally Posted By: QITNL
If Prop F goes down, we could find another area we could restore to its natural state of beauty.

How about Cape Cod?


"What a great idea! Cape Cod does seems to have enough problems at home to tackle without trying to advise Californians:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/us/18nitrogen.html" --Bob West

Hee-hee! Oh, no you dittent! You dit NOT just invoke the "And so are you!" defense!! You dit NOT just invoke the "outside agitator" defense!!

How I love it when they bring knives to a gun fight!! More fun when they're real knives, though. That all you got? C'mon, if you are going to resort to ad hominem attack, you have to do a lot better.

OK, yeah, we have water problems right here on Cape Cod, and right here in Orleans, where I am writing from. Imagine that! Actually I am trying to imagine some place that does not have similar environmental problems. Nope, can't do it. Well, at least not on the planet.

So nitrogen on the Cape makes the Hetch Hetchy plan a bad idea because . . . no, wait I know this one . . because . . .
that's it! Just because! So there!

Wait, seriously let's see if I can help sort this out.

So yeah, anyway, here on the Cape, we rely entirely on our groundwater for supply. There is no aqueduct or so much as a pipe from anywhere other than a local well. And for the last 400 years or so, we have relied on the same ground system to filter and recycle our water. Worked very well for about 375 of those years, until the nitrogen seeping in overtook the nitrogen uptake capacity of the ecosystem, mostly on the fringing salt march, not unlike that that Californians have systematically been destroying all around San Francisco Bay for about the last 175 years, just to mention a random example. Except ours in still intact.

But, yeah we seem to have a nitrogen loading problem. Course, its mostly overstated in the NYT article: the science is not crystal, and poor Gussie (a friend, by the way) happens to live on the most eutrophic salt water body in town. Most of the estuary isn't nearly as bad, and some is pristine: but Gussie's is pretty bad. Mine on the other hand (and by mine, I mean the one I lived on, off and on for forty years, about a mile farther upstream from Gussie's, was pretty damn good. I took clams and quahogs in my front yard without letup, also blue crabs and striped bass. The new owners and neighbors do too.

But Gussie's is pretty bad, and its clear that it time to do something about nitrogen loading before it gets that bad all over. Lots of other things here, too, like eroding beaches, hurricanes, declining fish stocks, California tourists, to name a random example: the usual plagues.

So what do we do. Well, one thing we don't do is go looking around for the nearest nationally owned resource to exploit. We have a great big commons on both sides of us: Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. We don't have a big wastewater treatment plant with an outfall pipe dumping into the commons, and we sure as hell didn't go commandeer some national treasure to supply our water to begin with. Not how we roll.

When Thoreau and Emerson for example (remember them?) were writing about living in harmony our natural heritage, we didn't sic some Dept of Agriculture goon on them so we could have Walden Pond or Nauset harbor all to ourselves. We paid attention. When John F Kennedy and Stewart Udall (remember them?) came calling in 1961, we worked with the Park Service, US Department of the Interior (remember them?) to turn over more than half the land, PRIVATE land, including all of the ocean beach and a lot of the bay side, on the Lower Cape to the Cape Cod National Seashore. Ever hear of it? You should come visit some time. s a National Park (remember them?) Everyone is Welcome: Even Californians can come, for example. So, restoration? You want to talk about restoration of natural beauty. Here's one clue: you don;t f&%# it up to begin with. You preserve it. Guy named Muir taught me that. Ever heard of him? And if you do f&%# it up, you fix it.

So. That brings us to nitrogen loading, what are we doing to fix it? Well, what my friend Gussie is up to first involves a plan. Yep, imagine that. Put together a plan. Paid the big bucks for a waste water treatment plan, even knowing beforehand that actually building the thing would cost bigger bucks, more than anybody here wanted to pay or thought was reasonable. But we commissioned a plan. Hers is for a $150 million water treatment system to replace her and 1999 of her closest friends septic systems. Yep, 150 million to sewer the 2000 homes that are identified as the greatest contributors to the nitrogen loading. Course, that was the initial estimate, in like 2010 dollars. I think its up to about 250 now, but at least we have a plan to look over, a real plan, not just someones speculation and fear-mongering about what such a plan would and would not do. And you knwo what, compared to sitting on our asses up to here in either sea lettuce, national subsidy, stolen resources or hypocrisy, the plan is looking pretty good.

That's right, 150 million and up to sewer 2000 homes. Who knew?

If ultimately the plan does not get implemented, it will be because someone comes up with something better, and few alternatives have been proposed. SO one thing we will not do is sit around and pat ourselves on the back for not even having a plan, pretending it was because of our "good sense" rather than our own selfish interest.

As for Cape Codders advising Californians: that's the most entertaining comment of this whole discussion. I haven't heard the outside agitator argument seriously propounded since the voter registration drives of the 60s. Then, people in Alabama and Mississippi were astounded to learn that they were screwing with people's national, constitutionally protected rights, and that the entire universe did not revolve around what the local White Citizens Council felt made good sense.

Little did I know that 50 years later educated people in California would have to be reminded that Yosemite is a National Park despite being used primarily in California to fill toilets and wash streets. So don't try to impress me with the implication that as a non-Californian I am somehow out of line commenting on Hetch Hetchy. I have exactly the same interest and the same standing in Hetch Hetchy as 99.7 percent of the population of this country. The .3 percent who can't make that claim are those of you who piss in its water.

As for advising Californians: I have been paid a lot of good money to do just that since I graduated from College in Claremont in 1974 and law school in LA in 1981. My most recent professional project in that regard is the mess California agriculture has (with its partners in Oregon) made of the upper Klamath Basin, especially Lower Klamath "Lake" and Tule "Lake".

It involves dam removal, replacement with renewable power, nutrient management, allocation of water resources and remediation of surface water eutrophication.



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Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
SierraNevada #29020 11/07/12 05:55 PM
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I have no dog in this fight (apologies to Mike Vick), but I've just got to say that this has been one of the most entertaining threads I've read in a while. And it just keeps getting better. Of course, the proposed plan is fiscally ludicrous, but when has that ever stopped California? It'll be interesting to see if this proposal dies a quick death, or gets legs for the next election cycle.

Rogue, you write great TRs and post excellent photos. Dance with who brung ya. Just sayin' . . .


Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
saltydog #29021 11/07/12 07:55 PM
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Yeah, it's sad, Cape Cod is really messed up. If anyone wants to help: Association to Preserve Cape Cod


Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Steve C #29022 11/08/12 07:26 AM
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Quote:
Dance with who brung ya. Just sayin' . . .


Unfortunately I don't know what this one means either lol.

I have to keep reminding myself to stick to hiking only on forums. I can't stomach the talking head disorder that is America anymore.

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
Bulldog34 #29023 11/08/12 07:41 AM
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Originally Posted By: Bulldog34
Of course, the proposed plan is fiscally ludicrous, but when has that ever stopped California?


Bulldog: Good point. The plan (actually there isn't a plan, that's sort of the point of the thread) but the prospect of the worst case scenario,let's say, is almost as ludicrous as SF paying the people of the US $30,000 per year for the power, water and real estate involved. That's the rent on a 1`-bedroom apartment in the City. In 1912 it was theft. Today, it makes Bernie Madoff look like a pickpocket.


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Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
QITNL #29024 11/08/12 08:15 AM
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Originally Posted By: QITNL
Yeah, it's sad, Cape Cod is really messed up. If anyone wants to help: Association to Preserve Cape Cod

The wastewater problem on Cape Cod is just one of many higher priority projects where action needs to be taken to stop ongoing environmental damage. Chesapeake Bay is another, the Everglades, SF Delta, Salton Sea etc.

The 42-page study is well done. Note how the cost estimates are tight from low to high because wastewater engineering is so well understood and the alternative solutions are obvious.

Re: SF prop F seeks plan to drain Hetch Hetchy
RoguePhotonic #29026 11/08/12 01:03 PM
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Originally Posted By: RoguePhotonic
Quote:
Dance with who brung ya. Just sayin' . . .


Unfortunately I don't know what this one means either lol.

I have to keep reminding myself to stick to hiking only on forums.


Yeah, that's pretty much what it means. Stick with your strengths. Things tend to go sideways on you when you drift into the political and philosophical.

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