In March 2006, Tom Philp, Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer for the Sacramento Bee spoke on efforts to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley and other water issues to the Sierra College class named Interdisciplinary 6: The Sierra Nevada.

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Biography

Tom Philp has been an editorial board member at The Sacramento Bee since 1997. An associate editor, he writes editorials, columns and Sunday Forum section articles about regional planning, water use issues, agriculture, forestry, energy, health care and telecommunications. Before joining the editorial board, Philp was a staff writer in The Bee newsroom for five years, covering a variety of subjects, including medicine. He has won a number of awards, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his series entitled “Hetch Hetchy Reclaimed.”

The Hetch Hetchy Valley is on the Tuolumne River, downstream from Tuolumne Meadows. The valley is within Yosemite National Park. It is fifteen miles north of Yosemite Valley. Hetch Hetchy was dammed by San Francisco in 1913 to provide the primary water and power source for the city.

John Muir called Hetch Hetchy “a grand landscape garden, one of Nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples.” Hetch Hetchy Valley is a virtual twin of Yosemite Valley, complete with huge waterfalls and massive granite cliffs nearly 2,000 feet high.

The damming of Hetch Hetchy was controversial at the time and remains an issue of contention today. Efforts to restore the natural state of the valley have been promoted for decades. Philp’s Pulitzer Prize winning series of editorials discussed these efforts and the accompanying economic and political controversies.