Bush Proposal Aids Yosemite

Higher S.F. water fee could add $8 million a year.

by Michael Doyle
Fresno Bee - February 5, 2004

Something akin to John Muir's revenge would help fund Yosemite National Park under the Bush administration budget unveiled Monday.

For the first time, the administration is proposing a significant increase in the amount San Francisco pays for use of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. The proposal, to be spelled out in legislation that has not yet been introduced, is supposed to provide Yosemite an additional $8 million a year.

"It's a good thing, and we support it," Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said Monday. "The benefit would be for us to expand the watershed protection that we currently provide."

The Yosemite plan, in turn, is only one of many of President Bush's budget proposals being closely scrutinized by California lawmakers and lobbyists. Many provisions in Bush's $2.4 trillion package, including the one for a new Hetch Hetchy fee, face long odds on Capitol Hill.

The administration wants to eliminate reimbursements to states, like California, that imprison many illegal immigrants. Indian casinos would pay markedly higher fees, and a federal anti-methamphetamine campaign would shrink. Central San Joaquin Valley meat, poultry and egg processors would have to reimburse the government more for inspections.

In a move potentially important for Sierra Nevada forests and the region's shrinking sawmill population, the administration wants to spend more on thinning forests so they're less susceptible to wildfire. The Forest Service proposes clearing away "hazardous fuels" on 1.8 million acres nationwide -- 200,000 acres more than this year.

Not that all of the Bush proposals will actually make it into law.

Many, like the proposed agricultural inspection fees, have been perennially raised and perennially ignored over a period of years. All of the proposals confront the complications of an election year and the revelations that the federal deficit will reach a record $521 billion.

"I don't see how this budget gets done," Rep. Cal Dooley, a Fresno-area Democrat, said Monday, "because I don't think the Republicans are going to be able to reach a consensus. The big fight ... is going to be between the most conservative Republicans fighting against the White House over spending."

The Yosemite funding proposal is a new one, though it revives an old debate.

San Francisco relies on the 360,000-acre-foot Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for water, having won the battle over environmentalist John Muir nearly a century ago to flood the famously picturesque Hetch Hetchy Valley. The city fended off congressional efforts in the mid-1990s to raise annual fees, which at the time were pegged at $30,000.

San Francisco also provides about $1.5 million a year to help Yosemite protect the Hetch Hetchy watershed, Gediman said.

In recent years, neither Congress nor the Bush administration has talked publicly about increasing the Hetch Hetchy fees. The new proposal comes from the Interior Department rather than from Yosemite officials themselves, Gediman said.

"It's going to be worth taking a look at," said Rep. George Radanovich, a Mariposa Republican and chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees national parks. He predicted, though, that San Francisco "won't like it at all."

Officials with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission did not return a telephone call seeking comment Monday.

Bush's Hetch Hetchy proposal isn't the only one certain to face California resistance.

The administration is proposing once again that no money be provided in the 2005 fiscal year as reimbursement for states such as California, Texas and Florida that house a large number of illegal immigrants. This year, $295 million is being provided for the so-called State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.

Bush has never asked for money for this program, but Congress always provides it.

California's Cal-Fed water program would get $15 million under the Bush budget -- half of what was provided for Cal-Fed-related programs this year. The program seeks to develop new water supplies and protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin River, among other ambitions, but funding also has remained low because Congress so far has failed to reauthorize it.