try to acquire water rights to Hetch Hetchy, including in 1901, 1903 and 1905, but was continually rebuffed because of conflicts with irrigation districts that had senior water rights on the Tuolumne River, and because of the valley's national park status. Damming In 1906, after a major earthquake and subsequent fire that devastated San Francisco, the inadequacy of the city's water system was made tragically clear. San Francisco applied to the United States Department of the Interior to gain water rights to Hetch Hetchy, and in 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, James R. Garfield, granted San Francisco the rights to development of the Tuolumne River. This provoked a seven-year environmental struggle with the environmental group Sierra Club, led by John Muir. Muir observed: Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man. Proponents of the dam replied that out of multiple sites considered by San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy had the "perfect architecture for a reservoir", with pristine water, lack of development or private property, a steep-sided and flat-floored profile that would maximize the amount of water stored, and a narrow outlet ideal for placement of a dam. They claimed the valley was not unique and would be even more beautiful with a lake. Muir predicted that this lake would create an unsightly "bathtub ring" around its perimeter, caused by the water's destruction of lichen growth on the canyon walls, which would inevitably be visible at low lake levels. Since the valley was within Yosemite National Park, an act of Congress was needed to authorize the project. The U.S. Congress passed and President Woodrow Wilson signed the Raker Act in 1913, which permitted the flooding of the valley under the conditions that power and water derived from the river could only be used for public interests. Ultimately, San Francisco sold hydropower from the dam to the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), which led to decades of legal wrangling and controversy over terms in the Raker Act. The controversy over Hetch Hetchy was in the context of other political scandals and controversies, especially prevalent in the Taft administration. The Great Alaskan Land Fraud and the Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy caused both Richard A. Ballinger and Gifford Pinchot to resign and be fired respectively. The openings in the Taft administration led to the eventual