Trump Administration intervenes in PG&E dam controversy

Opponents of a plan to remove two Pacific Gas & Electric Co. dams from the Eel River in Lake and Mendocino counties have gained a powerful ally: the Trump administration.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins filed a notice Friday to intervene in the utility’s bid to decommission its waterworks in the rural area. The structures include a century-old power plant that helps divert Eel River water into irrigation canals that support Potter Valley in Mendocino County and dump into the upper Russian River. The water recipients include customers in Marin County.

PG&E’s application to decommission the so-called Potter Valley Project is being considered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees licensing of the nation’s hydroelectric facilities.

“For generations, farmers here have put this water to good, productive use,” Rollins said 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 also filed comments urging FERC to reject PG&E’s application to surrender its license for the Potter Valley Project “unless significant deficiencies are addressed.”

PG&E is no longer interested in operating the system, which includes Scott Dam, at the base of Lake Pillsbury, and the smaller Cape Horn Dam, 12 miles downstream on the Eel, as well the nonoperational, 117-year-old powerhouse that used to generate electricity with a diverted share of the river’s flow.

Some agricultural interests and their allies have been pressing the Trump administration, almost since the day of its takeover early this year, to step in.

With her request to FERC, Rollins joined a crowded field of commenters. The commission has received more than 1,900 comments, letters and notices on the Potter Valley Project since Oct. 21, according to public data in the commission’s electronic library. More than 120 comments were posted on Friday alone.

Those messages are a mix of laudatory and critical, coming from a wide range of North Coast residents, farm interests, boaters, environmental stewards and anglers hoping to revive the area’s fisheries. And they expose some of the strange allegiances engendered by the controversial project, which would advance the nation’s next large dam removal project on California’s third longest river, historically a key waterway for once thriving runs of salmon and steelhead trout.

Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Butte County Republican, and Rep. Mike Thompson, a St. Helena Democrat, both filed comments questioning the project. LaMalfa urged FERC to reject PG&E’s application outright. Thompson asked for more analysis and more enforceable commitments from the public utility. Thompson represents Lake County, a staunch opponent of the decommissioning and dam removal plan. It would drain Lake Pillsbury, a seasonal destination within the rugged Mendocino National 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 rare moment of congruence between Thompson, one of the Bay Area’s more seasoned House Democrats, and an administration he is more apt to criticize.

On the other side of the issue is a dependable Thompson ally: Rep. Jared Huffman, the San Rafael Democrat who has been heavily involved in talks to orchestrate a solution to post-dam plumbing, water rights and fisheries restoration involving a host of counties, water managers, tribes, fisheries groups and farming interests.

Huffman, the ranking member for his party on the House Natural Resources Committee, could not be reached Friday for comment.

Earlier this year, the coalition he helped spearhead announced a long-term pact to govern water management in the two river basins, the Eel and the Russian, which are linked by a tunnel carved through a mountain saddle, allowing flows from the Eel to boost those in the drier Russian, a key irrigation supply for farms and vineyards and the main source of drinking water for 700,000 residents stretching from Mendocino County through Sonoma to Marin.

The deal has been a legal and political target ever since, with foes, especially farm interests, highly skeptical of terms that would limit diversions to periods when minimum flows are exceeded, raising uncomfortable questions for irrigators — and especially those in Potter Valley, which has relied on the diversions for decades as a lifeblood for the farms of its 1,200 residents.

Some there have accepted the decommissioning as inevitable, seeing no other parties — not the state or federal governments, nor any local water managers or companies — willing to take on PG&E’s waterworks, and their liability, to sustain the status quo.

Many others are determined to fight and their voices have a ready audience in the Trump administration, which has turned a critical eye on water policy and projects it sees as disadvantaging farmers.

As noted in the Department of Agriculture announcement, Rollins and seven other Trump agency heads received a letter of opposition written in late September and signed by 950 people.

“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.”

Most of the signatories were ranchers, farmers and business owners in Mendocino County, Lake County and northern Sonoma County. It also included public officials such as Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall, Lake County supervisors Eddie Crandell and Helen Owen, Petaluma City Council members Karen Nau and Alex DeCarli, Cloverdale Mayor Brian Wheeler and Vice Mayor Todd Lands, and a number of high-ranking fire officials — a sign of the angst around potentially losing a source for scooping and dropping water during the region’s rampant wildfires.

In a statement late Friday afternoon, PG&E said the utility worked for years to find a new owner 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 emphasized that the surrender process is lengthy, and that stakeholders, including the Forest Service, Cal Fire, tribal communities, farm bureaus and elected officials, will have plenty of opportunity to engage in the process.

“Regarding the USDA intervention,” the statement read, “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 Department of Agriculture includes the Forest Service, manager of the sprawling Mendocino National Forest at the Eel River headwaters.

Rollins’ notice of intervention did not come out of the blue. She had written a letter to the editor of the Mendocino Voice on Dec. 12, using even more incendiary language to describe the decommissioning plan.

“The heavy hand of California’s state government has gone unchecked for decades,” Rollins began in 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.”

At least one key stakeholder in the future of the project took the Department of Agriculture’s intervention in stride.

“What’s happened so far hasn’t changed anything about how ERPA plans to continue,” said Stuart Tiffen, spokesperson for Sonoma Water, referring to the Eel-Russian Project 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 Project Authority is a joint powers entity comprising the County of Sonoma, Sonoma Water — the region’s dominant drinking water supplier — and the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission. The Round Valley Indian Tribes, who are set to reclaim historic water rights to the Eel under the pact announced earlier this year, have a seat on the five-member board.

The authority will have the legal capacity to own, construct and operate a new $50 million diversion facility that would take the place of the current one, made obsolete if and when Cape Horn Dam and the larger Scott Dam come down, making the Eel the longest free flowing river in the state.

The Eel diversions into the Russian River would continue in some form for at least another 30 years after PG&E’s exit under the regional pact. Beyond that, there is potential for a 20-year extension.

Rollins’ notice refers to a number of USDA programs she claims would be negatively impacted by the dams’ decommissioning, including the National Forest system, the Risk Management Agency, the Farm Service Agency, Rural Development and the Natural Resources and Conservation Service.