Truss Bridge, Cross-Bay Pipelines, Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, Ravenswood, CA, 2025'nPixels, pixels everywhere, but not a drop to drink, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54852854853'n#photography

[mattblaze@federate.social]

Truss Bridge, Cross-Bay Pipelines, Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, Ravenswood, CA, 2025

Pixels, pixels everywhere, but not a drop to drink, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54852854853

#photography

[mattblaze@federate.social]

Captured with Rodenstock 138mm/6.5 HR Digaron-SW lens (@ f/7.1), Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50, 1/100 sec), Cambo WRS 5000 camera, stitched panorama of two images, shifted left and right +/- about 20mm.

A long, multi-section truss bridge carries the Hetch Hetchy pipeline over the final section of the Bay into the Peninsula at East Palo Alto. Looking at first glance like a railroad bridge, it's actually exclusively for two of the aqueduct's 5.5 foot diameter pipelines.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

California's Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, completed in 1936, delivers about 85% of the water used in the San Francisco Bay area. Originating over 160 miles away, at Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy reservoir, and working chiefly by gravity, a 21 mile section of two pipelines crosses the South Bay via a series of underground tunnels and bridges just south of the Dumbarton Bridge. This bridge section, near the end of its useful life, has recently been augmented by a deep tunnel.

Infrastructure is heroic.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

The Hetch Hetchy water system was controversial from the start, pitting conservation (the primary reservoir is in a national park) against the need for clean and reliable urban water supplies. At the time of its construction, the fires from the 1906 great earthquake were still freshly in living memory, though organizations like the Sierra Club still opposed the project.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@mattblaze I, for one, like the Water Temple.

https://www.sfpuc.gov/learning/come-visit/pulgas-water-temple