Do you know your Tap Water? Series #1

It’s likely that few of our 2.6 million Bay Area customers think about how we make sure that high quality water reaches their taps each day. We’d like to change that…. In a series we’re calling, ‘Do you Know Your Tap Water’?

#1 Hetch Hetchy

 

More than 85% of the water we provide to you, our customers, comes from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. It has to travel the width of the State of California in order to reach your taps. Here are a few facts about the system that serves you that you may not know.

 

  Hetch Hetchy Reservoir

 The Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System was constructed in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The Mitchell Shaft Crew pauses for a photo in 1934.

• As water tumbles out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, it generates hydropower to power services in the City of San Francisco, such as S.F. International Airport, MUNI and City Buildings. 

• Water moving downhill rotates 8 individual  turbines to generate hydropwer, such as the one pictured here in 1927.

This water travels all the way to the Bay Area using only the power of gravity.

The source of this water is so outstanding – melted glaciers sitting on a granite basin – that we that we do not have to filter water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

Did you know that the SFPUC worked out of a Livermore office during construction of the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System?