THE SAN FRANCISCO supervisors have made it remarkably clear that they don't want the city's Public Utilities Commission to continue using Bechtel Infrastructure Corp. to oversee the reconstruction of the Hetch Hetchy water system. But SFPUC general manager Pat Martel doesn't seem to be getting the message. Martel tried again last week to get the Finance Committee to approve an extension of Bechtel's contract, which is due to expire March 21 – and, as Savannah Blackwell reports on page 12, the committee members properly rejected the plan.

There's no reason this issue should ever have to come up again: Martel should take the supervisors' direction and begin phasing out Bechtel now. If she doesn't, the board should follow through with its funding cutoff and refuse to allocate another penny for a secretive private company that has a brutal record of privatizing water systems in the third world and is now trying to get its hands on Hetch Hetchy.

But the issue has now gone beyond the Bechtel contract. For years senior SFPUC staffers have allowed the Hetch Hetchy system to deteriorate. Instead of pushing for public power, which would have earned more than enough to pay to maintain and upgrade the old pipes and tunnels, Martel's predecessors were content to shovel enough revenue back to the city's General Fund to keep the mayor and the supervisors happy, while the system slowly fell apart. Now – following the classic privatization pattern we've seen over and over again – Martel is arguing that the city can't clean up the mess without bringing in an expensive, private, outside management consultant.

Nonsense. The city has hundreds of civil engineers on staff, many of them in departments that are downsizing (the airport, for example). Martel needs to hire enough people to do the job – as city employees, under city control, operating in compliance with the city's sunshine laws – and use outside contractors only absolutely necessary.