Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle September 16, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Friday, September 16, 2011
The days are numbered for the old tower and decorative arches at Calaveras Dam, which holds back the reservoir that is San Francisco's largest local source of drinking water.
Workers for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will begin shoveling dirt today as part of a $416 million project to replace the 210-foot-high earthen barrier that has collected water from Alameda Creek for 86 years.
The dam, built in 1925 on top of an earthquake fault, was deemed seismically unsafe a decade ago, and the reservoir has been operating 51 feet below capacity as a precaution. The plan is to build a new 220-foot-high dam immediately downstream in the same remote canyon surrounded by oak-dotted hills and grasslands northeast of Milpitas.
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