Opponents of a plan to take away two Pacific Fuel & Electrical Co. dams from the Eel River in Lake and Mendocino counties have gained a strong ally: the Trump administration.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins filed a discover Friday to intervene within the utility’s bid to decommission its waterworks within the rural space. The buildings embrace a century-old energy plant that helps divert Eel River water into irrigation canals that assist Potter Valley in Mendocino County and dump into the higher Russian River. The water recipients embrace clients in Marin County.
PG&E’s software to decommission the so-called Potter Valley Challenge is being thought-about by the Federal Power Regulatory Fee, or FERC, which oversees licensing of the nation’s hydroelectric services.
“For generations, farmers here have put this water to good, productive use,” Rollins mentioned in an announcement. “But under California’s radical leadership, the needs of hardworking families are being ignored while the needs of fish are treated as more important. That’s simply wrong.”
Rollins additionally filed feedback urging FERC to reject PG&E’s software to give up its license for the Potter Valley Challenge “unless significant deficiencies are addressed.”
PG&E is now not interested by working the system, which incorporates Scott Dam, on the base of Lake Pillsbury, and the smaller Cape Horn Dam, 12 miles downstream on the Eel, as effectively the nonoperational, 117-year-old powerhouse that used to generate electrical energy with a diverted share of the river’s stream.
Some agricultural pursuits and their allies have been urgent the Trump administration, virtually because the day of its takeover early this 12 months, to step in.
Along with her request to FERC, Rollins joined a crowded discipline of commenters. The fee has acquired greater than 1,900 feedback, letters and notices on the Potter Valley Challenge since Oct. 21, based on public knowledge within the fee’s digital library. Greater than 120 feedback had been posted on Friday alone.
These messages are a mixture of laudatory and significant, coming from a variety of North Coast residents, farm pursuits, boaters, environmental stewards and anglers hoping to revive the world’s fisheries. And so they expose a number of the unusual allegiances engendered by the controversial mission, which might advance the nation’s subsequent massive dam removing mission on California’s third longest river, traditionally a key waterway for as soon as thriving runs of salmon and steelhead trout.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Butte County Republican, and Rep. Mike Thompson, a St. Helena Democrat, each filed feedback questioning the mission. LaMalfa urged FERC to reject PG&E’s software outright. Thompson requested for extra evaluation and extra enforceable commitments from the general public utility. Thompson represents Lake County, a staunch opponent of the decommissioning and dam removing plan. It could drain Lake Pillsbury, a seasonal vacation spot throughout the rugged Mendocino Nationwide Forest and homebase for about 450 residents.
“I remain deeply concerned by the lack of detail, analysis, and specificity in PG&E’s surrender application, particularly with respect to the substantial impacts on water supply reliability, environmental restoration, wildfire resilience, and the economic well-being of affected communities,” Thompson wrote Friday to FERC chair Laura Swett.
It marked a uncommon second of congruence between Thompson, one of many Bay Space’s extra seasoned Home Democrats, and an administration he’s extra apt to criticize.
Kent Porter / The Press Democrat
The spillway gates at Scott Dam run full blast after heavy rain and snowstorms in 2019. The dam, recognized to be seismically unstable, is slated to be torn down as a part of the decommissioning of Pacific Fuel and Electrical’s Potter Valley Challenge hydropower system. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Kent Porter — The Press Democrat, 2024
Cape Horn Dam could be dismantled underneath PG&E’s plan to desert its license for the Potter Valley Challenge. (Kent Porter — The Press Democrat, 2024)
Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat
Water diverted from the Eel River turns mills inside PG&E’s Potter Valley Powerhouse hydroelectric plant, which releases the water into the East Fork of the Russian River in Mendocino County on Thursday, April 6, 2017. (Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)
Kent Porter / Press Democrat
The east fork of the Russian River flows from the Potter Valley hydroelectric technology plant in Potter Valley. A brand new diversion facility could be constructed if the Federal Power Regulatory Fee approves PG&E’s plans to decommission its energy plant and give up its working license. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat)
Amie Windsor / The Press Democrat
‘Save Lake Pillsbury’ indicators will be noticed all through the Lake Pillsbury watershed, together with Potter Valley. (Amie Windsor / The Press Democrat)
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, proper, speaks throughout a farm tour in Lebanon, Ind., Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Picture/Michael Conroy)
Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat
Individuals crowd into the Cloverdale Veterans Memorial Constructing in the course of the Potter Valley Challenge city corridor assembly in Cloverdale on Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat
Cloverdale Mayor Todd Lands speaks in the course of the Potter Valley Challenge city corridor assembly in Cloverdale on Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
Kent Porter / The Press Democrat
A bucolic scene in Potter Valley, Wednesday, Might 14, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Present Caption
Kent Porter / The Press Democrat
1 of 9
The spillway gates at Scott Dam run full blast after heavy rain and snowstorms in 2019. The dam, recognized to be seismically unstable, is slated to be torn down as a part of the decommissioning of Pacific Fuel and Electrical’s Potter Valley Challenge hydropower system. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Develop
On the opposite aspect of the difficulty is a reliable Thompson ally: Rep. Jared Huffman, the San Rafael Democrat who has been closely concerned in talks to orchestrate an answer to post-dam plumbing, water rights and fisheries restoration involving a number of counties, water managers, tribes, fisheries teams and farming pursuits.
Huffman, the rating member for his get together on the Home Pure Assets Committee, couldn’t be reached Friday for remark.
Earlier this 12 months, the coalition he helped spearhead introduced a long-term pact to manipulate water administration within the two river basins, the Eel and the Russian, that are linked by a tunnel carved by means of a mountain saddle, permitting flows from the Eel to spice up these within the drier Russian, a key irrigation provide for farms and vineyards and the principle supply of consuming water for 700,000 residents stretching from Mendocino County by means of Sonoma to Marin.
The deal has been a authorized and political goal ever since, with foes, particularly farm pursuits, extremely skeptical of phrases that might restrict diversions to intervals when minimal flows are exceeded, elevating uncomfortable questions for irrigators — and particularly these in Potter Valley, which has relied on the diversions for many years as a lifeblood for the farms of its 1,200 residents.
Some there have accepted the decommissioning as inevitable, seeing no different events — not the state or federal governments, nor any native water managers or firms — keen to tackle PG&E’s waterworks, and their legal responsibility, to maintain the established order.
Many others are decided to battle and their voices have a prepared viewers within the Trump administration, which has turned a vital eye on water coverage and initiatives it sees as disadvantaging farmers.
As famous within the Division of Agriculture announcement, Rollins and 7 different Trump company heads acquired a letter of opposition written in late September and signed by 950 individuals.
“PG&E’s decommissioning plan is inadequate, non-compliant with federal law, and dismissive of community and environmental consequences,” that letter concluded. “We urge the Commission and cooperating agencies to reject the plan in its current form and facilitate a transparent, science-driven process that includes robust stakeholder consultation.”
A lot of the signatories had been ranchers, farmers and enterprise homeowners in Mendocino County, Lake County and northern Sonoma County. It additionally included public officers similar to Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall, Lake County supervisors Eddie Crandell and Helen Owen, Petaluma Metropolis Council members Karen Nau and Alex DeCarli, Cloverdale Mayor Brian Wheeler and Vice Mayor Todd Lands, and numerous high-ranking hearth officers — an indication of the angst round doubtlessly shedding a supply for scooping and dropping water in the course of the area’s rampant wildfires.
Lake Pillsbury on Dec. 13, 2018. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat) Kent Porter / The Press Democrat File
In an announcement late Friday afternoon, PG&E mentioned the utility labored for years to discover a new proprietor for the dam-and-diversion system, “but ultimately no third party stepped forward to execute a transaction. PG&E made the difficult decision to stop our relicensing effort of the project, as it was not economical for our customers to continue operating the project. No entity applied to take over the relicensing of the Potter Valley Project during FERC’s window period.”
The utility emphasised that the give up course of is prolonged, and that stakeholders, together with the Forest Service, Cal Hearth, tribal communities, farm bureaus and elected officers, could have loads of alternative to interact within the course of.
“Regarding the USDA intervention,” the assertion learn, “we wanted to note that PG&E expects to see intervenors in the surrender process. The USDA is often one of the intervenors in projects that affect or are on (U.S. Forest Service) properties.”
The Division of Agriculture contains the Forest Service, supervisor of the sprawling Mendocino Nationwide Forest on the Eel River headwaters.
Rollins’ discover of intervention didn’t come out of the blue. She had written a letter to the editor of the Mendocino Voice on Dec. 12, utilizing much more incendiary language to explain the decommissioning plan.
“The heavy hand of California’s state government has gone unchecked for decades,” Rollins started within the letter. “The results? Burned-out cities and landscapes. Manmade water crises. A widening socioeconomic divide. It breaks my heart that our nation’s largest food-producing state has chosen special interests and political ambition over its farmers, ranchers and rural communities time and time again.”
Not less than one key stakeholder in the way forward for the mission took the Division of Agriculture’s intervention in stride.
“What’s happened so far hasn’t changed anything about how ERPA plans to continue,” mentioned Stuart Tiffen, spokesperson for Sonoma Water, referring to the Eel-Russian Challenge Authority. “There’s a lot of compliance work that needs to happen, and design work on the new facility. That’s what we’re focused on.”
The Eel-Russian Challenge Authority is a joint powers entity comprising the County of Sonoma, Sonoma Water — the area’s dominant consuming water provider — and the Mendocino County Inland Water and Energy Fee. The Spherical Valley Indian Tribes, who’re set to reclaim historic water rights to the Eel underneath the pact introduced earlier this 12 months, have a seat on the five-member board.
The authority could have the authorized capability to personal, assemble and function a brand new $50 million diversion facility that might take the place of the present one, made out of date if and when Cape Horn Dam and the bigger Scott Dam come down, making the Eel the longest free flowing river within the state.
The Eel diversions into the Russian River would proceed in some type for no less than one other 30 years after PG&E’s exit underneath the regional pact. Past that, there’s potential for a 20-year extension.
Rollins’ discover refers to numerous USDA packages she claims could be negatively impacted by the dams’ decommissioning, together with the Nationwide Forest system, the Danger Administration Company, the Farm Service Company, Rural Improvement and the Pure Assets and Conservation Service.
