I lived in the Bay Area when this was proposed. I don't recall a lot of support.
DAM-BUSTERS -- Washington Post
December 3, 1987
SAN FRANCISCO -- At the end of her tenure as mayor of this fermenting metropolis, Dianne Feinstein probably thought she had seen all the stimulation life could hurl her way. Then the telephone on her desk rang, and from across the continent in Washington the secretary of interior said he had a neat idea for turning off the city's water and electricity.
Well, not really. Without prejudging his idea -- which he stresses is only that, an idea, not a proposal -- this should be said: Secretary Donald Hodel is having Second Term Fun. His idea for dismantling a dam and draining Hetch Hetchy reservoir is the sort of thing that can only be thought in a president's second term, when fatigue has everyone feeling a bit flaky and they don't mind raising some dust.
The Hetch Hetchy water covers what once was a dazzling valley especially loved by John Muir, founder of the San Francisco-based Sierra Club. The valley would be the worse for wear after six decades under water, but Hodel rightly thinks it would be fascinating to watch nature restore it, as the slopes of Mount St. Helens are being restored.
Feinstein tartly calls Hodel's ''the worst idea since the sale of weapons to Iran.'' Hodel's Cabinet colleague, Secretary of Energy John Harrington, clearly thinks the idea is crackers because it would cost billions -- perhaps $6 billion -- to find alternative water supplies and new sources of electricity, the sale of which is important to San Francisco.