Friends of the Eel Respond Optimistically to PG&E’s Announcement
The following is a press release from Friends of the Eel River responding to PG&E’s announcement earlier today.
Friends of the Eel River welcomes today’s announcement by PG&E that the utility is withdrawing its formal notice of intent to seek relicensing of the Potter Valley Project (PVP) before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and ceasing its efforts to sell off the two dams and associated diversion works. The two dams and diversion works of the Potter Valley Project divert water from the upper mainstem Eel River to the upper Russian River.
“This is by no means the end of the story,” said FOER Conservation Director Scott Greacen. “But this is the turning point. Removal of at least Scott Dam is now more likely than not.”
In its notice to FERC, PG&E admits that “Potter Valley has long been recognized as uneconomic for PG&E’s ratepayers,” and points to “declining energy markets … increased costs associated with anticipated new license conditions, and challenging financial circumstances …” as reasons to withdraw its relicensing application.
FOER cautions, however, that the full picture of the liabilities associated with the Eel River dams has yet to emerge. “PG&E may be facing financial reality here, but they have yet to come clean either about the potentially disastrous safety situation at Scott Dam, or about the ecological impacts of the dam on Eel River salmon, steelhead, and lamprey,” said David Keller, FOER’s Bay Area director.
For its part, FERC is now likely to move the PVP to its ‘orphan project’ process. While the agency will probably repeat the utility’s apparently unsuccessful effort to find a new buyer for the dams, FOER thinks the ultimate outcome is now likely to be decommissioning and removal of at least Scott Dam.
“The good news here is that the stakeholders’ group convened by Rep. Huffman to address PVP relicensing has already done most of the work to lay out a truly sustainable solution to needs of both the Russian and Eel River watersheds,” said Greacen. “Now it’s time to move forward with an agreement to remove Scott Dam and restore the Eel River’s fisheries.”
You can read the notice of withdrawal PG&E sent to FERC here.
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🕯The removal of Scott’s Dam is a good thing then,right?
Taking out Scott dam would be a good thing for the main stem eel river. Sonoma and southern Mendocino development interests want wall to wall housing and vineyards. It is disgusting how many new people have flooded into Santa Rosa and yakayo”ukiah”valleys.
The landscape is very gentle, the water naturally sparse. It’s a true shame so much of it has been urbanized or covered with alcohol.
They don’t deserve eel river water, as it’s outside the natural watershed, but northern growers have abused the resource of the eel river as well. Very embarrassing to be human sometimes.
Lake pillsbury will eventually be a silt flat, and let’s hope, NOT the site of next generations future casino development.
Good job Scott greacan and eel friends, keeping up the fight.
Hopefully we can return the eels natural flow to the north, while limiting human population growth in Sonoma and Mendocino counties and in humboldt counties.
Conserving “resources” without limiting human population expansion is self defeating.
In my view, California is maxed out.
Enough is enough.
Humanity is a jewel, but we’ve had our chance.
7 billion and counting
Agree with everything. And isn’t it swell that Gavin, Nancy, Diane, Chuck and the rest of the gang want millions more while they can’t take care of what they have?
isnt it grand that gavin and nacy both have vine investments.
Pot needs way more water than wine grapes. And newsom has helped Napa wineries convert to weed growing. And the sucking humboldt dupes are permitting industrial weed grows along the eel river. The fish bat last.
~sigh. The “over population” myth has to go too.
If it comes down to the numbers the entire world’s population can fit in Texas. This has been said many times and when it comes down to basic math, it is true. Texas is 268,581 Square miles, if some amazing engineer were to design the father of all complexes; basically a China housing unit on steroids is the only thing that would work. The building would cover the entire state of Texas. Rivers, ponds, and creeks included; literally every square inch of Texas would be engulfed in this building. There would be one thousand square feet per person. http://factslist.net/2013/03/the-entire-world-population-can-sink-into-the-state-of-texas/
But since we cant seem to live sustainably, there may be too many of us.
Harvested Alive – 10 year’s investigation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7zlzpU3Exk&t=737s 1:02:55 January 17, 2019
Sustainability simply means a significantly reduced population.
18 USC § 1342, DMM 602.1.3.e.2
Would they have enough bbq?
More so, the entire world population can fit in Humboldt county with about 15 square feet to the person. Granted a 5×3 foot area is not enough to really live, it gives an idea as to how big our planet really is.
Thank you.
Maybe the bygone era of tourism and little stores and hotels and small resorts will take shape again in a few decades as the river heals, more tourism develops and the fishery is restored. Then again, maybe it will take a hundred years.
Good luck with the money hungry political climate.i believe it will be a cold day in hell before they stop selling our river and blaming the low flows in summer on the rural folks downstream.After all it’s our shameful supervisors excuse to extort there constituats,and fish and wildlifes excuse to circumvent the Constitution and lead there own little dictatorship!!!!
It’s what we experience here on the Trinity River in Salyer:..the far west side of the Black Market County/Trinity County. Just lie down and let the Steam Roller powered by Elected Officials ROLL ON…’Green Chain’…..for any of you who graduated from HSU in the Good Old Daze. The Planning Commission and the Board of Supes ALL drink the Kool-Aid…..for the “sake of our limited/challenged economy”. To heck with the Tax-payers…who still abhor this Marijuana Market Economy.
There is probably enough cash buried in ammo cans within 1 mile of the river to buy the dam, but the odds of that happening are zip.
Be careful, those ammo cans leak.
The return of the salmon and steelhead runs to the Eel would be an opportunity for a revitalized economy to all the small towns along the river. The Eel was one of the half dozen world class fisheries on the west coast, and some real renewed interest would come if the runs returned.
Anyone who thinks the dam will be demolished and Eel river water shut off from rich people and vineyards in Sonoma & Marin counties has been smoking too much Train Wreck. If this ever happens, I`ll blow a goat.
FYI: An ammo can is a really poor place to store cash or anything you want to bury. They can quite quickly rust through and are found easily with a metal detector. Get some 4″ or larger PVC pipe; make a thing like a pipe bomb with a threaded plug in one end. Use toilet bowl gasket wax on the threads as sealant and lube. If you really want to be safe; package the cash with a seal-a-meal and boil the sealed packages to sterilize them so they don`t mold.
I fear you are right. The Southerners have too much money. Only if we were willing to violate the law and take radical action is this dam going to be demolished.
“When the people rise in masses in behalf of the Union and the liberties of their country, truly may it be said, the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.” Abraham Lincoln
We don’t have masses around here…we are the hinterlands, and, unfortunately, almost nobody outside of Humboldt cares what happens- they have their own equally pressing environmental issues to solve. Our local environmental groups are truly dedicated & amazing. Support them all you can!
I fear you’re right.
Oh Michael, if you do that, how are you supposed to find that bugger when you go back for it ten years later??
same way as you do a pickle barrel.
Perhaps you should post a utube video for all the wealthy stoners. And another one when you blow a goat.
Michael has the happiest goat in the county. 😉
Michael,
My goat has asked me if I can arrange a play date for him at your place.
I’d like the dam to come down. But now that means I also must want you to blow a goat? Good job on complicating an already complicated issue!
I rarely laugh out loud at the comment section but this one…I shall probably chuckle more than once at this one.
Blow a goat! now there’s a saying i haven’t heard since high school.. but we used to say blow a DEAD
goat!
I grew up in potter valley and still live here. I be been hiking and camping above lake pilsbury at all different times of the year for many years. Anyone who thinks there will be enough water flow to bring the eel back is sadly mistaken. All the headwaters almost dry up during summer. And as far as fish the fish have adapted to the situation but it not matter because there won’t be enough water for them to come close. Without controlled flow from the dam to keep water flow constant all year we will be f–ked. And stopping the Russian river will hurt a whole lot more than rich wineries. Fish?? Hay, veggies, house water.
Funny that the ones who have the resource say, “it’s not very much that we’re using.”
Well I know the Russian River hasn’t been going dry in the summers, for a very long time. As opposed to the eel, when people regularly walk across it by July.
In the eighties, we remember water skiing in the lower eel, in the summer time, before the big diversion push to the south.
No, the water is there. And it didn’t just go underground, all of a sudden, after eons of running above ground.
Good news! Thank you, FOER, for your continued efforts.
I have never once seen the headwaters dry up in the last 40 years, all the way to Hulls Cr. Kill the goddamn dam, shitcan the diversion. If the Eel goes dry, it will be from the countless (literally) weed grows all up and down the river. If the river didn’t have those grows sucking up the millions of gallons of springs/creeks it wouldn’t go dry.
~the diversions and the dams are something that grew up around us – happened a generation or so before us. Like paying income tax –our parents did, so we just kept the ball rolling -the wrong way.
Dead Harvest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax5A3r_z4KA 38:06 February 25, 2016
primarywater.org Primary Water is why we don’t have a water shortage. WATER IS A RENEWABLE!
Two minutes from midnight.