The SFPUC also provides wholesale water service to an additional 1.9 million customers in three other San Francisco Bay Area counties.

[1] The SFPUC manages a complex water supply system consisting of reservoirs, tunnels, pipelines and treatment facilities and is the third largest municipal utility agency in California.

In 2023, CleanPowerSF and Hetch Hetchy Power collectively saved customers more than $170 million on electric bills compared to for-profit utility PG&E.

[6][7] In 1906, William Bowers Bourn II, a major stockholder in the SVWC, and owner of the giant Empire Mine, hired Willis Polk to design a "water temple" atop the spot where three subterranean water mains converge, from the Arroyo de la Laguna and Alameda Creeks, the Sunol infiltration galleries, and a 30-inch pipeline from the artesian well field of Pleasanton.

[8][9] Municipal efforts to buy out the SVWC had been a source of constant controversy from as early as 1873, when the first attempt to purchase it was turned down by San Francisco voters because the price was too high.

[11] Prior to completion of the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct in 1934, half of San Francisco's water supply, approximately 6 million gallons per day passed through the Sunol temple.

At the time of its formation, the commission was responsible for the Hetch Hetchy Project, San Francisco Municipal Railway, Water Department, and Airport.