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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy reservoir sites. The travel into 

 this portion of the park is constantly increasing, and by the 

 time the Hetch Hetchy site is available, it will number many 

 thousands annually. This travel into the watershed will have 

 the effect of seriously polluting the water supply and will compel 

 the city to resort to filtration. The question at once arises as 

 to whether, in view of the fact that the city's water will ultimately 

 have to be filtered anyway, it would not be better policy to secure 

 our water nearer at hand to begin with, at less cost, and filter 

 it to the requisite purity. 



The Hetch Hetchy pipe-line will necessarily cross the San 

 Joaquin River many miles from its intake. Why not pump the 

 water directly from this point? It will eliminate many miles 

 of expensive pipe-line and all the great cost of storage sites and 

 dams. This water is unlimited in quantity and will be as free 

 of conflicting rights as any water in CaHfornia, because it will 

 be taken below a point where it can be used for irrigation. It 

 can then be filtered to any degree of purity, and the cost of filtra- 

 tion will be so little compared to the saving accompHshed as to 

 be insignificant in amount. 



Apropos of this subject the following extracts from a letter 

 written to Mr. Muir by J. Horace McFarland, President of the 

 American Civic Association, will be of interest: — 



"My feeling is that before this [Hetch Hetchy] grant can pos- 

 sibly be availed of a wider knowledge of the way in which a 

 municipality may properly arrange a water supply for a future 

 great population will intervene to negative the whole project. 

 So far as the American Civic Association can bring it about, 

 directly and through its intimate affiliation with the powerful 

 National Municipal League, there will be an endeavor to spread 

 the essential gospel that no self-respecting community caring 

 for the health of its present and future citizens can afford to 

 provide a water supply not efficiently filtered close to the time 

 of use. This principle has already been recognized in New 

 York City. Statistics which were presented to the Conference 

 in Washington last week, but not discussed, show conclusively 

 that filtration is the only safety, unless a city is so fortunate as 

 to have access to an underground supply of water of proved 

 purity. This does not disprove the general dictum, because the 

 underground supply is naturally filtered as efficiently as if 

 artificially filtered. 



"I suggest, therefore, that agitation be at once begim upon 

 the matter of filtration of the San Francisco water supply. At- 

 tention can be called to the fact that if filtration is accepted as 

 a necessity the supply itself need not be of complete purity. I 

 have been drinking every day for two and a half years filtered 

 Susquehanna River water, crystal clear and sparkhng, free from 

 injurious organisms, which twenty-four hours previous to the 

 time of drinking was culm-infested, filth-filled, and full of disease 



