John Upton San Francisco Profiles Bay Bridge eyebar fix Hetch Hetchy series→ Earthquake anniversary Cosco Busan oil spill Power plant debate Radioactive air pollution Gas pipeline safety johnupton@gmail.com			Safeguarding Hetch Hetchy water A five-part San Francisco Examiner series about a multibillion-dollar project to protect San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy water system. Complete coverage is at www.sfexaminer.com/loma-prieta. Multibillion-dollar water project protects supply  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 26, 2009 Julie Labonte didn't know what her high-achieving career as a water engineer held in store for her as she bounded down Mount Kilimanjaro in 2005, propelled by gravity, in the midst of a yearlong globetrot. The Canadian-born, U.S.-trained engineer had walked away from an illustrious career with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission for a multi-continental jaunt, peppered with frequent climbs of rugged mountains. While working for the SFPUC - which oversees such services as water and sewers around the region - in San Francisco and its suburbs over a decade, Labonte had managed fluoridation of the water supply, a water treatment plant, utilities strategies for major redevelopment projects and massive sewer improvements. "I always had this love for water," said Labonte, who holds related master's degrees from UC Berkeley and San Diego State University. "I understood very early on that water would eventually be the place to be because of the need for water, the shortage of water and the misuse of water." But Labonte's wanderlust grew strong after the SFPUC assigned her to a project to build a fossil fuel power plant in southeastern San Francisco. Labonte wasn't interested in working on a project involving electricity, which she says is less tangible and less interesting than water, and the project was mired in controversy. "I was turning 40 and my partner and I decided that we wanted to see the world," she said. "We basically sold everything we owned. We didn't own a key; we didn't even own a vehicle. We decided that we were going to end up wherever we ended up." After a year spent narrowly escaping international hazards - including a tsunami, a Maoist uprising and a Bolivian coup - Labonte returned to North America with an open mind about her future. SFPUC officials asked Labonte to return to work on the power plant project, which has since been nixed. Instead of returning to work for the SFPUC, Labonte began leaning toward working in Vancouver to help build a subway for the 2010 Winter Olympics. But the SFPUC made a new offer - one that proved irresistible to Labonte and to other leading water engineers from around the world: Work on the Water System Improvement Program. The WSIP, pronounced "wissip," is a $4 billion to $5 billion bond-funded project approved by San Francisco voters in 2002. Labonte now oversees the massive public works effort, which aims to rebuild, replace, reinforce and supplement the pipes, reservoirs and mechanical facilities in the Hetch Hetchy system. It is through that unique 167-mile system - powered almost entirely by gravity - that fresh drinking water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir high in Yosemite National Park is funneled, treated, pumped and stored for 2.5 million Bay Area businesses and residents. Roughly $1 billion worth of work is planned in 2010 as the tempo is radically escalating. The focus is shifting from completed local projects to massive regional ones. The money from the bond will go toward 85 projects in the region that will create more than 28,000 jobs, according to the SFPUC. Construction began in 2003 and is expected to run until 2015. The economic climate has reduced project labor and material costs as the project has entered its most intensive construction phase, which will help reduce future rate hikes needed to repay project lenders, Labonte said. Construction costs fell worldwide after the economy collapsed late last year as investment in building and public works projects fell abruptly. Demand for raw materials plummeted, and contractors and workers found themselves competing to work on a suddenly shrunken pool of projects. As a result, bids for WSIP projects have been coming in this year at 20 to 30 percent below budget, the SFPUC announced this month. Recession-era savings will help offset $200 million in cost overruns that were previously identified. WSIP is designed to protect water supplies after an earthquake on any of the three tectonic faults that cross the century-old network. It's also needed to help catch up on maintenance that was deferred in recent years to pay for other city programs. "The complexity associated with the seismic design has attracted some top people," Labonte said. "We've attracted top-notch engineers from the private sector because it's such an exciting program." The project is providing thousands of trade, engineering, project management, public affairs and support jobs during a recession that left more than one out of every 10 Californians unemployed. The fruit of the huge team's labor will be tested after an earthquake, when officials say clean water will quickly resume tumbling down the mountain, propelled by gravity, through massive pipelines and into Bay Area drinking glasses, fire-hoses and factories. "Within 24 hours, our system will be able to deliver the winter water demand," Labonte said. "Within 30 days, we will be able to go back to a full average demand of 300 million gallons a day." Reservoir's snowmelt powers, quenches city The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which catches snowmelt that keeps San Franciscans quenched all year, has remained controversial since it was proposed more than a century ago in the middle of a national park. Spurred by the 1906 earthquake and fire - and by the domination of The City's water supply by private interests - city officials lobbied Congress to allow them to build a dam in Yosemite National Park to trap drinking water and produce hydroelectric power. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Raker Act in 1913, which granted San Francisco the right to dam a part of the park for water and power. The act also provided San Francisco with rights of way needed to run electrical and water pipes through the park. The reservoir was built between 1919 and 1923, and construction of dams and pipes continued until the 1970s. The massive water system now serves all of San Francisco's water needs, plus nearly 2 million customers in surrounding counties. It also provides municipal power for San Francisco's Police, Fire and other departments. Spurred by the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, voters in 2002 approved the Water System Improvement Program, which will see more than $4 billion spent on new and repaired pipelines and other facilities between San Francisco and the dam by the end of 2015. Because of pressure by environmentalists to remove the reservoir, and because it's already considered seismically safe, work on the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir - and the O'Shaughnessy Dam that holds it in place - was not included in the seismic retrofit project. Dam rebuild will boost capacity  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 27, 2009 Rebuilding a dam in the East Bay that was not designed to withstand a major earthquake will allow additional drinking water to be stored for Bay Area residents and protect the area near the reservoir from flood damage after a temblor. A multibillion-dollar, 12-year project by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is overhauling the Hetch Hetchy water system to help protect drinking-water supplies after earthquakes for the 2.5 million customers served by the agency. One of the major projects is rebuilding the Calaveras Dam, which is the second-largest drinking-water reservoir in the SFPUC system. Many of San Francisco's reservoirs were built over seismic faults in the early 20th century because the fault lines naturally create concave depressions in the earth, and Calaveras Reservoir is one of those. When it was built in the 1920s, the 210-foot Calaveras Dam was designed to hold 31 billion gallons of drinking water to help supplement the main storage facility at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park and in smaller dams throughout The City's long water network. Since the dam is not designed to withstand a major temblor that could strike the fault on which it sits, the water levels of the reservoir have been dramatically lowered. "The existing dam was constructed using an antiquated method of construction," Project Manager Dan Wade said. Additionally, initial efforts to build Calaveras Dam failed and the structure that exists today was built on top of some of the rubble from the initial failure, which reduces the dam's ability to withstand an earthquake, according to Wade. An earthquake on the Calaveras Fault could cause ground beneath the reservoir to temporarily liquefy and lead to 20 to 30 feet of sediment piling up on its floor, Wade said. The sediment would quickly raise the water level, potentially causing it to overflow the dam, which would erode the earthen structure and possibly lead to its total collapse. That would cause a flood of water to be released into Alameda Creek. Federal officials in 2001 ordered San Francisco to reduce the reservoir's water level by 60 percent to minimize flood damage to downstream cities, such as Sunol and Fremont, should the dam be damaged by an earthquake. In an effort to restore the reservoir to full capacity, which helps ensure year-round drinking water supplies that are harvested in late winter and spring from melting snow, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will build a new dam wall nearby the existing one, which will then be removed. As well as holding Hetch Hetchy water, the reservoir catches most of the water that flows through the Upper Alameda Creek, impacting trout, salmon and other species that rely on the habitat. The dam's estimated cost has grown from $257 million to $410 million, in part because of measures needed to release water into the creek, according to SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington. Costs also increased because naturally occurring asbestos in the serpentine soil required more worker protection measures than originally anticipated, according to Harrington. Unlike higher-profile dams that are made of sheer concrete walls, such as the Hoover Dam, Calaveras Dam is a mound of clay, rocks and other fill material which is safer to use in earthquake zones than concrete walls. "If anything happens to the rest of our system, we and our 2.5 million customers will be dependent on water storage on this side of the hills," Harrington said. Upgrade will make Peninsula reservoir safer The primary water storage reservoir for the Peninsula will be rebuilt to protect the surrounding area from floods. The Lower Crystal Springs Reservoir, an oasis that was constructed in the mountains of San Mateo County, was lowered 8 feet in the early 1980s after California dam safety officials ruled that it posed a flood risk. The reservoir's spillway will be widened to reduce flooding risks and other work will also be undertaken. Spillways are built next to reservoirs to catch overflowing water to prevent floods from deluging rivers or creeks. The $36 million project is forecast to begin in early 2011 and finish a year later. Tunnel below Bay will pipe water  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 28, 2009 The first tunnel bored beneath San Francisco Bay will carry drinking water five miles from Fremont to San Mateo County. Boring of the $350 million Bay Tunnel is one step that's planned as part of an effort to create a 21-mile stretch of new piping between the East Bay and the Peninsula to ensure that water continues to reach millions of customers after an earthquake. The project is part of the multibillion-dollar Water System Improvement Program, which aims to overhaul the Hetch Hetchy water system that holds and transports drinking water for 2.5 million Bay Area residents. As part of the program, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is replacing and reinforcing water pipes and tunnels throughout a 167-mile network that carries snowmelt from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park west to San Francisco and surrounding cities. The piping planned beneath the Bay under the WSIP will be part of the fifth major pipeline installed in the Hetch Hetchy system between the East Bay and the Peninsula since the 1920s. The existing four pipelines are aging and could rupture during an earthquake. They were built between 1925 and 1973 using now-outdated construction materials. Two of the pipelines veer south and wind around the Bay, passing through Silicon Valley. The other two pipelines cross over the Bay on a custom-built bridge that runs parallel to the Dumbarton Bridge between Newark and Menlo Park. The pipes that cross the water leak badly, leading vegetation to flourish at their corroded metal seams. But the ramshackle 1920s-era bridge crosses sensitive wetlands that are protected by federal environmental laws. Those laws effectively prevent water officials from accessing or maintaining the pipeline. "You basically can't walk on it," Project Manager Joe Ortiz said. "We have some pretty extensive environmental regulations - certainly the most that I've seen on any project that I've worked on in 23 years. In the '20s, they could do anything. But nowadays, with our regulations, it's almost impossible to step on the land." An underwater 9-foot-wide metal pipeline is planned to eventually replace both Bay-crossing pipes, although it's not known whether they will be removed because dismantling efforts could disrupt wetland wildlife. Tunnel construction efforts using a heavy-duty tunnel-boring machine are expected to begin next year and last until 2015. The tunnel will pass up to 100 feet beneath the Bay floor. Dirt and other fill that's removed from the tunnel as it is bored will be used by an unrelated but adjacent project that aims to restore industrial salt ponds to native marshland, Ortiz said. Other projects to improve the earthquake resilience of the system of piping that carries water west from the East Bay will increase the number of interconnections between pipes. Interconnections between pipes are important because they allow water officials to redirect water from one pipeline to another following a rupture or maintenance and repair efforts, without completely switching off the westerly flow of water. New San Mateo pipeline to replace aging passages A custom-made tunnel-boring machine is helping dig a 12-foot-wide tunnel for a new water pipeline beneath Polhemus Road in San Mateo County. While other pipelines in the area are being rebuilt or repaired, the Crystal Springs Bypass Tunnel will house a new pipeline. The 4,200-foot pipeline is needed because aging underground pipes in the area, which carry all of the water from the East Bay to the Peninsula and San Francisco, are vulnerable to landslides and earthquakes. Work on the tunnel and pipeline is expected to finish in late 2011 and cost $95 million. Storage locations to stay safe  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 29, 2009 While efforts are ramping up to rebuild and reinforce lake-size drinking water reservoirs east and south of San Francisco, a blitz of similar work at smaller facilities is well under way inside The City. The multibillion-dollar Water System Improvement Project aims to protect The City's drinking-water supply from earthquakes and help the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission catch up on needed maintenance. The system comprises massive dams and school bus-size pipes east and south of San Francisco that deliver snowmelt from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the Sierras and some river water. Once water reaches The City, it enters a labyrinth of above-ground tanks, subterranean reservoirs, pump stations and narrower piping. San Franciscans would rely largely on water stored within city limits for a period of time if an earthquake or other disaster ruptured major pipelines that deliver water into The City. "We have to be self-sufficient," said Howard Fung, a San Francisco Public Utilities Commission water official overseeing WSIP projects inside city limits. "That's why these large reservoirs were built following the fire and earthquake in '06 - we wanted to have storage locally." The largest in-city water storage facilities are underground reservoirs that are being refurbished and seismically reinforced under WSIP. Such work helps protect neighborhoods from floods and increases the likelihood that water will continue flowing through taps if any of the reservoirs are affected by an earthquake. One of the two subterranean storage basins at the University Mound Reservoir was drained in late July, allowing frantic, floodlit work to begin in 12-hour daily spurts inside the cavernous facility, which is covered by a concrete sheath. "The other basin had some work done several years ago," Fung said. "It's a very old reservoir." New columns and struts and diagonal bracing are being installed inside the Portola district reservoir to better protect it from earthquakes. Aging concrete, reservoir lining, inlets, outlets and pipes are also being replaced. Work is expected to cost $47 million and finish in 2011. A similar project finished earlier this year at one of the two Sunset Reservoir basins, which store water in the outer avenues, and another project is being planned west of Twin Peaks at Sutro Reservoir. The City's drinking-water reservoirs are supplemented by scores of above-ground tanks and pump stations that help push water to customers up San Francisco's hilly terrain. "The topography of The City isn't flat, so we couldn't deliver water from one central location," Fung said. Tanks and pump stations are also being reinforced, rebuilt and built anew under WSIP. Pipeline nourishes both sides of SF An underground pipeline was laid this year across The City to help ensure that both sides of San Francisco remain quenched following a calamity. If major pipelines into The City rupture, one or more of San Francisco in-city reservoirs could start drying out as customers draw down its supplies. The new East/West Transmission Main, which ranges from 36 to 42 inches wide, will allow water officials dealing with desiccating reservoirs to shift supplies between the eastern and western parts of The City. The 4½-mile pipeline, which was laid as part of the Water Safety Improvement Project at a cost to water ratepayers of $28.6 million, connects the University Mound Reservoir in the Portola district to the Sunset Reservoir. Existing pipelines were also being dug up and replaced beneath The City under WSIP. Lighting the way to safer water  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 30, 2009 The water 2.5 million Bay Area residents drink will be safer once a $112 million water treatment plant is open in 2012. The multibillion-dollar Water System Improvement Project aims to protect The City's drinking water supply from earthquakes and help the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission catch up on needed maintenance. A portion of that project is a new water treatment site in San Joaquin County, where water will wash over ultraviolet light bulbs designed to kill stomach-infecting bugs before flowing through San Francisco taps. A 14,000-square-foot building - where water will be treated and disinfected using chlorine, fluoride and other chemicals - is being built to replace the existing facility 8 miles south of Tracy at the Tesla Treatment Plant. The aging plant doesn't meet modern earthquake, fire or building codes. The new plant, which is expected to be fully operational by early 2012, will feature two consecutive treatment facilities. After water is chemically treated, a neighboring 20,000-square-foot building will provide a new level of treatment that's needed to meet guidelines updated recently by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help protect the public from cryptosporidium. Cryptosporidium is a type of microscopic parasite that causes severe stomach illness in humans and other animals. The parasites are protected by a shell that helps them survive for prolonged periods outside of their victims' bodies. The shell also makes the single-celled bugs difficult to kill using normal concentrations of chlorine. Ultraviolet light will be used at the treatment plant to help ensure that any cryptosporidium in San Francisco's water supply is killed before it reaches a customer. Water will flow at Tesla Treatment Facility past 10 to 12 ultraviolet lamp arrays, each arranged inside a large pipe and comprising scores of individual bulbs. With a processing capacity of 315 million gallons of water per day, Tesla will be the nation's third-largest ultraviolet water treatment facility and the biggest in California. Construction of the new facilities will require a weekslong shutdown of water pipelines from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to San Francisco. To prepare for the shutdown, which was timed to coincide with a wintertime lull in water usage, Bay Area reservoirs are being filled up through an increased water flow from Hetch Hetchy. Construction of the treatment plant is employing workers in the economically distressed San Joaquin Valley who lost jobs when a housing bubble-related construction boom ground to a halt last year. "We've seen a real slowdown in construction," San Joaquin County Supervisor Leroy Ornellas said. "There was so much construction going on that it started to create a life of its own." Construction of the plant began in May and work is expected to continue for two years. The federal government requires less-intensive treatment of Hetch Hetchy water than water from most other sources because the Yosemite National Park snowmelt is considered pristine. To comply with the EPA's recently updated guidelines, most water agencies will filter water, chemically treat it and expose it to ultraviolet lights. San Francisco, on the other hand, secured a waiver allowing it to avoid filtration. Groundwater to add to drinking water Groundwater will be treated and mixed into San Francisco's drinking water to help supplement snowmelt that flows from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and water that's tapped from creeks and rivers. Up to six wells, each hundreds of feet deep, are planned in western San Francisco to extract 4 million gallons per day of water from the Westside Groundwater Basin. The 45-square-mile basin is a series of aquifers extending from Golden Gate Park through San Bruno. By 2013, the groundwater is planned to be disinfected and poured into the municipal drinking- water system. "We are going to be blending very low quantities of groundwater," Water System Improvement Project manager Julie Labonte said. "People are never going to see a difference." The blended water will be used mostly in the western part of San Francisco, where it could constitute up to 10 percent of the water that flows through taps. Additionally, sewage is planned to be safely treated and used to irrigate golf courses that are presently watered using drinking-water supplies. top				← Multibillion-dollar water project protects supply, Dec. 26, 2009 ← Dam rebuild will boost capacity, Dec. 27, 2009 ← Tunnel below Bay will pipe water, Dec. 28, 2009 ← Storage locations to stay safe, Dec. 29, 2009 ← Lighting the way to safer water, Dec. 30, 2009