Potter Valley Project Negotiations Stay Afloat Through Rough Waters

Water history continues to unfold in unprecedented ways as parties from all sides of the Potter Valley Project which diverts water from the main stem of the Eel River into the Russian River have joined, or may join, a ‘planning agreement’ that is striving to acquire the FERC License that authorizes the operations of the Potter Valley Project 9MW micro hydroelectric station.

California Trout and Humboldt County are both signatories to the planning document to operate the water diversion licensed as a power generation station under FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.) Friends of the Eel River may also sign and Round Valley Tribes has been invited. And Humboldt County, the only one of the four counties negatively impacted by the diversion, has staff contributing heavily to the license application and reporting out to the Eel Russian River Commission on that progress.

The Eel Russian River Commission offers the only public window into the negotiations for resolving the complex water and environmental issues inherent in the PVP. The ERRC last met on August 23rd in Ukiah. The ERRC meetings continue to reveal a water negotiation process that is moving slowly but almost relentlessly toward a solution for most of the dilemmas involved in the complex project, but it also shows that the process is nonetheless fraught with human emotion and political drama because so much is at stake and so much is unknown.

At the meeting, Friends of the Eel River’s Scott Greacen gave public comment on the progress of the FERC Application’s Feasibility Study perimeters. Greacen’s remarks highlighted both what’s working and what remains to be worked out in what will become of the PVP and its license to operate.

Scott Greacen commented at the podium,

The Eel and its fisheries have suffered serious and ongoing harms from the Scott and Cape Horn Dams for a century now.
…[T]he two-basin framework proposed by Congressman Huffman in the working group rests on two basic principles: fish get the passage they need, and Russian River water users get the water they need.

For us, as Eel River fisheries advocates, advocates of fisheries restoration, it’s clear that the two basin framework offers the clearest and most certain path to a solution that restores fish passage to the upper Eel River which is an absolute pre-condition for restoring some of the fish we are concerned  about especially summer steelhead.

[It challenged] Friends of the Eel River to join the two basin solution and agree to give up our long held opposition to the inter-basin diversion of Eel River water to the Russian River. This is something we have firmly opposed in principle. However, we have agreed [through the ad hoc process] to support a continued diversion if we can secure the volitional fish passage the Eel River salmon, steelhead, and Lamprey need.

The science on this matter is now crystal clear. And while we don’t have the final report yet, the experts have assessed the options. And neither fish ladders nor truck and haul come anywhere close to meeting fisheries needs. Only dam removal does. The only thing that comes close to full dam removal is partial dam removal. That just the facts.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear our good faith in this effort is being reciprocated. I think we need to be candid about the challenge this presents to the two basin solution….Mendocino County Power and Water insists Lake County be joined to the planning agreement as a voting member.

But David Keller and I have attended the last two meetings of the Lake County Board of Supervisors and it has been very clear in those discussions that the Board firmly opposes Scott Dam removal.

Under these circumstances, Lake County’s professed adherence to the two basin principles can only be understood as a charade. And MCWP insistence that Lake County come in appears to be an effort to frustrate the two basin solution.

Absent an unequivocal commitment by Lake County to support dam removal as we have committed to support continued diversion, we will oppose Lake County entry into the Planning Agreement. We are very concerned about this development.”

Friends of the Eel River (FOER) says it is fully engaged in a process and its staff says it believes the process is underpinned by a trustworthy and fair framework alongside partners whose science they deem unbiased and sound. Yet, FOER also says some interests are moving outside the framework that supports the trust. Greacen’s remarks nonetheless indicate FOER remains engaged and state how FOER will work to resolve the concern. Congressman Huffman indicated that parties becoming entrenched in how needs will be met and making statements of position is a natural part of the negotiation process in his last interview with us.

The relationships involved in the Potter Valley Project have multiple layers. Some of them are conflicting.

Greacen delivered his remarks to the Eel Russian River Commission whose commissioners are Supervisors from each of the four counties impacted by the Potter Valley Project.

The Commissioners are all part of the ad hoc committee where they sit on a level playing field with other stakeholders such as FOER. And one of the Commissioners, Carre Brown, sits on the Inland Power board.

Despite the complexity of the relationships, in the ongoing development of the PVP, the Eel Russian River Commission provides an important open dialogue given the discreet nature of the ad hoc committee juxtaposed with the very important public interest values of water and fisheries. The newly forming planning agreement group is currently developing its path to public engagement currently.

For the last two years the primary conversation among all invited stakeholders has been occurring in Congressman Huffman’s ‘ad hoc committee on the Potter Valley Project.’ This group is closed to the public because its primary goal has been to set the basis for the potential future need of a legally negotiated water rights settlement in the advent that PG&E didn’t finish its reapplication process on a micro hydro project of 9 mw, geographically removed from its other hydroelectric plants, and with extremely costly environmental regulations to meet, according to Congressman Huffman in an earlier report. And, in fact, while PG&E initially began the relicensing process, it shortly announced that it would auction off the PVP, and later announced that it would abandon the license altogether.

Congressman Huffman’s career includes work as a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He knows complex environmental lawsuits are time consuming and much more costly than mediating solutions for the needs and costs of making necessary environmental changes to old infrastructure projects such as the PVP.

Negotiated settlement agreements involve the process of working challenges out in a mediated setting. Mediation requires trust and vulnerability among the parties so the ad hoc is not open to the public. But at the public Commission meeting, Greacen’s remarks reflected that the mediation process while inherently rocky appears to be working well.

The Congressman opened the ad hoc committee on the grounds that solutions for both basins needs must be addressed. The ad hoc committee contracts with the Consensus Building Institute for its mediation services. The committee stakeholders developed the precise definitions of each basin’s solutions with the assistance of that mediation.

The two-basin solution goals have been defined as,

[To] imrove fish passage and habitat on the Eel River sufficient to support recovery of naturally reproducing, self-sustaining and harvestable native anadromous fish populations including migratory access upstream and downstream at current project dam locations;
and
[To] minimize or avoid adverse impacts to water supply reliability, fisheries, water quality and recreation in the Russian River and Eel River basins

Congressman Huffman has insisted stakeholders remain neutral on how each party’s goals are met.

When Vivian Helliwell of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) gave public comment, she revealed some of the philosophy that makes the process work. Helliwell referenced Troy Fletcher of the Yurok Tribe. He is renowned for having shepherded many parties into a stakeholder process to negotiate the water agreements needed for the Klamath Dam removal. Helliwell reminded the group that his mantra in that process was for “us to solve each other’s problems.” Helliwell noted this has been working in the ad hoc committee on the PVP as well.

The ad hoc has built its negotiations on relationships and understanding that began in California Trout’s Eel River Forum and on science from the FERC relicensing studies. The Eel River Forum began bringing the science-based parties involved in the Eel River together in 2016. Its membership has always included PG&E’s biologist for the PVP, Sonoma Water, and Potter Valley Irrigation as well as tribes, federal and state regulatory agencies and environmental groups from the Eel River. The Eel River Forum continues to develop a thorough understanding of all the current science in the Eel River watershed.

PG&E’s FERC relicensing feasibility studies, which involved most members of the Eel River Forum, developed specific areas of the ecosystem being impacted by the dams to study and the methods by which to study them. In the ad hoc group, those parties continue their focus on science based solutions to human and fisheries needs. And that is spilling over into the planning agreement.  One of its stated goals reads, “Reliance on best available science and engineering analyses as the basis for evaluating options for restoration, water delivery, and hydroelectric generation pursuant to a new license.”

Arising from the complications in the process, which are born in the needs and fears of the people of the region, Greacen’s comments are framed in environmental law. When Greacen says FOER has given up a long held objection to negotiate on the actual goal of fish passage for the purpose of fisheries recovery, he enters into the record FOER’s legal interest in the process and the element that FOER finds must be included in the solution in order that FOER remain out of court and at the table working to find the best possible answer for everyone else.

While Humboldt County and Friends of the Eel River have invested in the mediated process and continue to find a negotiated agreement the most efficient way to move forward, it is also easier to accept a winter diversion, instead of no diversion, than it is to accept the loss of security of a water supply, flood protection and recreational enjoyment that restricting the diversion will bring to those in the Russian River watershed. And isn’t Santa Rosa, but Humboldt’s neighbors in northeastern Mendocino County that undergo the most insecurity as these changes take place.

Communities of small, family operations such as Potter Valley and Redwood Valley who have no other summertime water supply in a County with little economic funding to build major infrastructure to pump water up from Lake Mendocino at a cost everyone can afford are left the most vulnerable given the direction the ad hoc committee moved. There are also about 450 landowners in Lake County who could lose significant value in their homes if Lake Pillsbury behind Scott Dam is eliminated.

The Mendocino County Supervisor, Carre Brown, lives in Potter Valley, and she knows what may be lost if the PVP is decommissioned. As the Mendocino Supervisor for that district, she is also on the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power District which formed during the last PG&E bankruptcy specifically poised to adopt license #77 if PG&E had decided to abandon it in that earlier bankruptcy. While PG&E held the license then, Inland Water has remained active during the interim and has stepped up to adopt that license now.

However, Inland Water hasn’t the resources to run such a regional project single handedly and invited Sonoma Water to join the application for the FERC license.
That decision in early spring, sent some shock waves through the ad hoc committee. The ad hoc process challenged that decision and its reasoning.

Whatever happened specifically is out of public view, but by May, California Trout, an environmental group generally seen as supportive of removing Scott Dam for fisheries restoration signed the planning agreement. The new team revised the Planning Agreement to better reflect the two basin solution. And soon afterward Humboldt County signed on as well.

Each time a group is added, it is by unanimous consent of the existing membership. As Friends of the Eel River is being considered, Scott Greacen says Inland Water and Power is insisting that Lake County also be signed, but clearly Friends of the Eel River thinks there are politics at play in those moves.

However, Mr. Crandall the Supervisor from Lake County reminded the room that he is obligated to hear from all his constituents, and that their voice is part of his responsibility to represent. But, Supervisor Crandall says, that Lake County supports dam removal, in principle, if Lake County’s needs can be met through the negotiation process.

Resource Pages

• ERRC webpage
• Amended Planning Agreement for the Potter Valley Project
• Huffman’s ad hoc committee
• Mendocino County Resolution
• Sonoma County Resolution (resolution starts on page 4)
• Lake County Resolution
• Humboldt County Resolution
• Mendocino Farm Bureau page on the PVP re-licensing
• Potter Valley Irrigation District has a PhD of data on the PVP
• Friends of the Eel River page on the PVP
• Ride the Eel in 1914 (reference of midsummer flows before Scott Dam)
• Save Lake Pillsbury

Earlier Chapters:

• Humboldt County Residents’ Input Not Actively Sought by FERC in PVP Relicensing Studies Open for Comment
• PG&E Announces It May Sell or Abandon the PVP
• Huffman Comments on PG&E’s Plans for the PVP
• Hot Potato: PG&E Offered PVP to the ERRC
• Eel River Forum Hears Science Research on Steelhead
• A Deeper Look at PG&E’s Auctioning of PVP
• KMUD News on Potter Valley Project
• PG&E Abandons PVP License
• Friends of the Eel River Respond to PG&E’s Abandoning of PVP License
• PG&E Orphaned the Potter Valley Project: What’s happened & What Comes Next?