Huffman Responds To Ferc Decision Denying Potter Valley Project Extension
Scott Dam which is part of the Potter Valley Project. [Photo cropped by one from PG&E]
[Yesterday], Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), Chair of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife, released the following statement on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) decision to deny a request by a group of Northern California agencies to pause its application to take over the license for the Potter Valley Project:
“The Two Basin Partners have worked diligently to find common ground and resources to pursue a revitalized Potter Valley Project – but we always knew that this would be a major challenge. [Yesterday’s] ruling by FERC is just a new chapter in seeking a Two Basin Solution, and I am committed to doing the hard work needed to achieve that end. This partnership and the stakeholders in the Eel and Russian river basins are strong and ready to take on a new challenge,” said Huffman.
Congressman Huffman has played an active role in the matter, having facilitated initial discussions to create a Two Basin Solution for the project and establishing the Potter Valley Project Ad Hoc Committee in 2018. The Two-Basin Partnership includes California Trout, Humboldt County, the Mendocino County Inland Water & Power Commission, the Round Valley Indian Tribes and Sonoma County Water Agency.
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
Stop the steal, return Eel River waters NOW!!!
Sorry we already used it.
Who is diverting the most water out of the Eel River? The California Government. There’s lots publicity put out in attempts to blame Cannabis for the low flows. But it’s all just biased information. If the government wanted to help the rivers this would be a great time to keep the water in the Eel River.
Jered Huffman
Learn how to follow the rules set in place for cannabis farms.
No on stream lakes or ponds,
No surface water diversions, except in the winter for storage
Better find some engineers looks like you have some infrastructure projects you need to complete.
Bull the growers use up a lot of water. The low waters have many causes and growers are one of them.
Alot….
Good facts
I wonder if those trying to say growers are not (at least in part) the problem have ever looked to see how many grows are in our hills. A simple Google Earth scan will show incredible amounts of grows each collecting and using thousands of gallons of water that is not making it to streams, springs and rivers. Not saying growers are THE problem but they definitely have a significant contribution.
Last Week the South Fork of the Eel stopped flowing. The has never happened before. Eel River diversions to the Russian River happen on the upper reaches of the Middle Fork of the Eel. Diversions take many forms.
The biggest one is Scott dam. Those are facts.
Not reefer madness
Scott dam, #1. Cultivation#2. Scott dam is a legal diversion 100 years old. Diversion for reefer big enough to make a big difference started twenty years ago and is very apparent in this drought year.
If you are diverting large quantities of water because you went ape-shit to grow as much reefer as you can to make a bunch of money, f*ck you, you killed the Golden Goose and the river too. You pushed it over the top.
The PG&e diversion is wrong, bad and a hundred years old with countless households depending on it FOR THEIR EVERYDAY LIFE. It is a basic lesson in sustainability that is starting to rear its head across western America. 100 year old water rights that worked when the population was a fraction and water was everywhere need to be rethought. It’s a brave new world and even the OLD sh*t needs to be redone, who needs newbies and their get-rich-quick schemes to f*ck it further?
How do you feel about diverting water for Grapes? That is to get rich too right? Do you know how much water a winery uses to clean equipment?
Oh boy, wish I had a rolling my eyes emoticon for that! Grapes are far less regulated than legal reefer and I can remember they were all but non-existent in Mendo and Sonoma. That’s another greedy grabber thing, but it appears to me the newbie reefer growers that read High Times and came out to make their fortune from some other state and don’t give a shit about where they live as long as they get rich are like ticks that can be quickly picked off…should be.
Grape growers are another big problem stemming from greed and fashion. They are completely out of touch with sustainability for the most part and relatively recent.
But big reefer growers that just recently popped up and follow no regs whatsoever have no reason whatsoever to snivel about their greedy bubble being popped. The smaller scale growers who have been around forever and made do with little water are getting screwed, no doubt.
The times are changing and we are all in for some bitter lessons in sustainability. Past that, legal marijuana was the worst thing to happen to long term Ma and Pa pot growers, but it was a good ride.
That 100 year old water contract is coming due for renewal soon.. I wonder what side Huffman will be on, it’s a war of the haves and the haves not. Not much has been saved, people still washing their cars and watering the lawn. The west has gone dry
Just follow the money and you’ll find Huffman’s allegiance…
Hmmmm, I thought that water contract was in perpetuity, the water is REALLY gonna hit the fan when it expires! Sonoma county will come out swinging , no doubt!
I believe we’ll be getting the swing of the pendulum and serious rain in the next year or two. The rainfall up/down cycle every three years or so hasn’t changed on the time frame but is HAS gotten more extreme. Serious rain comin’ up.
It’ll be interesting to see what Sonoma county does when that contract expires…sadly somehow I don’t expect the fish to win.
Half (or less) normal rainfall is a huge factor
Yes it is, we don’t miss the water ’til the well runs dry and we wouldn’t be looking so hard at who is using water if there was more to go around.
My bet is some big rain coming in the next year or two. It follows a three/four year cycle and that time frame hasn’t seemed to change, just the cycles more extreme.
It seems to have change in my perception. We used to have big rain every year. Around 2009 that started to change.
Cut off the pot cut off wine grapes. Now that our borders are open to the world. The few that will still work will need to grow food for all the entitled of the globe
Diversion is on main Eel not the middle fork.
Today, I returned to the area of the the South Fork of the Eel River that I discovered had dried up on the 14th of September, and today , the 24th, it is flowing nicely again…
Good news!
I have a photo of the same area, and a 15 second video showing the “current” flow, if your interested.
Yes, please!
🤔🧐Mysteriously, Higgins has reported on Lost Coast Outpost that he has discovered this as well, today @ 11:00AM.😁
I’ll have to email it again…
Sorry.
You are aware that there is still water flowing beneath all the gravel that filled the riverbeds when the giant floods brought down millions of tons of debris from the post war mechanized logging decimated the hillsides from Laytonville to Scotia?
That water canot be used by the fish.
Biased information it is not. The PG&E diversion is #1 and based on 100 year old water rights from a time water was plentiful. It now supports countless households in two counties.
It is wrong, and based on a long gone past that needs to be changed, but newbie money grabbing greedy bastards chasing money that don’t give sh*t about where they live and grow as much as they can until they bail are the SECOND cause of the river suffering. They are also the easiest and most immediate cause that can and should be removed, like parasites.
big growers that are sucking the river dry can go suck on a cactus somewhere and go back to where they came from.
You sound really biased.
Biased? Yep, I am biased against greedy people who foul their own nest and everyone else’s to get rich quick. Giant Deps and lotsa water and fertilizer. They flood the market and destroy the economy and ecology and retire somewhere else. F*ck ’em
Upvote
YOU sound really biased in favor of large scale growers diverting from the river, are YOU one of them? I’m not talking about less than say 80 plants (big enough), but NEW growers doing big deps 2-3 times a year and turning their property into industrial AG in the hills.
So you said it’s not biased information, but then said your biased.
Hopefully other people see the reefer madness
Yes, “reefer madness”. Since legalization large scale illegal grows have exploded, water sucked dry, market flooded.
Certainly there are many factors adding up to the water crisis but IMO large scale illegal grows are the sore thumb that can easily be smacked and should be.
Reefer madness has prevailed, it’s no longer a laid back country lifestyle, but an industrial AG pop-culture boom-show me the money!
a bias can come by way of fact. A bias is not necessarily preconceived, unreasonable, or contrary to evidence.
Many of them came from right here.
Yep, and they can go somewhere else as far as I am concerned. I am not talking about smaller growers, less than 75-100 plants and do their best to make a minimal impact, I’m talking about the huge deps, etc..
You totally missed the point which is, the government can’t even follow the rules that have put in place for cannabis growers. No using water from on stream ponds and lakes. And only using surface water during rainy periods.
You can’t use a pre 1914 water right to water cannabis the government won’t allow it.
So why should the government be allowed to do it? Must not be because they care about the fish and animals.
Reefer madness
Actually “the science”, YOU miss the point. It’s hard to reverse a bad decision from a hundred years ago that basically much of Sonoma county’s development has been built on, but it is much easier to remove the recent ballooning of large grows that pay no attention whatsoever to regulations.
Legal grows are subject to heavy restrictions, the harshest of any AG product which is not fair or good for NorCal economically, that’s another subject. But I am speaking of the large illegal grows that are predominantly newbies here to take the money and run without a care about the water, the environment or where they live.
The state does it all the time.
Reverse the decision, save the fish. Sorry your lawn won’t be green anymore
It has rarely been done and only recently.
One thing you should realize is there is no water right to the EEL River. There is only a water right after the PGE diversion in the Russian river. That water right can stay.
The diversion from the Eel should stop.
Maybe Sonoma county should have a building moratorium
I can totally agree on THAT. Bad planning for YEARS, show me tha money!
I love this response. Thank you
Thank you for da thank you!
I hear what you are saying Joe BUT: we are all the same people, we are neighbors. Santa Rosa grape farmers, they have been around longer than our weed farmers. It is our water originally, but they have built their farming reality on the water that they receive, and so have the areas that have been developed for people to live. Point is, it’s not an easy solution. Just like everywhere, too many people and not enough water. No easy solutions. People are going to suffer. It’s always easier to say; let the other people suffer, but it’s not very neighborly.
Yep, Sonoma county was built on that water. Bad planning but it’s there now and hard to reverse a hundred years. No easy solutions.
It is an easy solution. Begin by reducing the diversion by a reasonable percentage, say 30%, then provide a time table for shutting off the rest of the diversion, perhaps 10 years.
The state should also offer to buy out the farms that depend on our stolen water, for reasonable prices.
Really, I’d be happy with a complete elimination of the diversion, but Sonoma county will be fighting it hard, and they’ll throw money at it.
Stop the steal!
Good let them decommission it, then tear it down. And PGE should be made to pay for it. With this drought we are seeing the effects its having on the Eel. Quit diverting our water south. In the future, wars won’t be fought for oil, but for water.
Yes PG&e should be made to pay for it but that’s not the way we do things in this society. Because we are rapidly capitalistic we put public utilities in the hands of private corporations, who then profit massively while providing us horrendously low quality service. Then when they are finished extracting wealth for my resources, the taxpayers must pay for the cleanup.
Same way we’ve done it with the railroads and the logging companies.
well then, with that being said, the next war would be between Southern ca. and Northern ca.
Yes PG&e should be made to pay for it but that’s not the way we do things in this society. Because we are rapidly capitalistic we put public utilities in the hands of private corporations, who then profit massively while providing us horrendously low quality service. Then when they are finished extracting wealth for my resources, the taxpayers must pay for the cleanup.
Same way we’ve done it with the railroads and the logging companies.
hmm, it has always had a name; “internalizing the profits and externalizing the cost”. Humboldt County has seen its unfair share of this practice for a very long time. Please remember, the Humboldt County Planning Director serves at the pleasure of the Board of Supervisors, if you want to change all this, you start with them…
Thank you for that information.
Politicians listen to the money… and there is a lot of money down south.
What does all the water deverting do to the climate change? Maybe this is hurting the global weather. Water that is ment for the northern pacific is going into the wrong area?
Who in Humboldt County government agreed to join the ONE basin solution? My representative said she is not favor of it.
When did Humboldt join and who made the decision for us?
I dont know a single perosn in Humboldt who wants the water theft to continue.
Follow the money.
That’s the motive but it doesn’t easily produce the suspects. Are our county supervisors complicit in this?
Like I said… ‘follow the money’.
How?
Seems like you are just throwing out a common saying with little utility.
Huffman is based in San Rafael. He represents Marin and Sonoma counties (and nominally Mendocino and Humboldt). The water from the diversion of the Eel is going to Santa Rosa and northern Marin development and expansion. What do you think his mission is here? I’m gonna make a wild guess and say….Give us up north some pretty words and… Keep that water flowing south. I don’t trust him for a second. Santa Rosa NEEDS that water. Until they develop their own massive reservoirs or decrease their population they will take that water- even if the fish must all die. That’s how politics works and that’s just how people are. Heck- I know people down in Rosa and they don’t even have a clue or a concern about where their water comes from. They just use it and use it- washing their fancy cars and maintaining their LA-type lifestyles. Pretty sick when ya think about it…
Sonoma county is building, Marin is not. It is very rare to see any new construction there. And the median price for existing homes is $1.8 million because of the restraint on building.
I’m not sure how you can say that “Marin isn’t building”. Novato population 2010-52,000…2016-55,900…They have to live somewhere. And here is an article about Sonoma Water supplying Marin with water….https://www.marinij.com/2021/05/17/sonoma-to-cut-marin-water-imports-this-summer/
Not only do the Southerner refuse to compensate Humboldt for the water taken in the past, they also reject paying anything for future diversions AND they have threateend that if we do not continue to give them our water for free, they will push to have dams created in other areas of our watershed.
“The Two Basin Partners”…
Only a politician would call an arrangement where one party (Russian watershed) takes from the other (Eel watershed) while returning nothing a partnership. I agree with e fox and others on this story.
And when the subject of compensation was broched their responce was that they will not conside compensation for past or fture water diversions, AND they threatend to press for the develpment of other dams in our watersheds as retaliation if we do not continue to allow the water theft.
Prime example of why big govenment is bad. They take something simple and make it over complex and expensive then scream they need more money due to expense of operating costs. They worry more about the process than getting things done.
There is plenty of water in southern CA just too damn many people. Its a fucking desert ie limited water. They can use water more effecantly ie drip irrigation for crops. Desalaniate ocean water to name a few. But noooo hell no they take our water and kill our rivers while blaming the now dead logging industery.
Tear down that damn or at least quit diverting any water. Now there is a solution just quit diverting water until their process can tear it down.
So fucking simple solution but all the educated idiots can not figure it out. Amazing
It is a lack of intelligent government regulation that caused this mess.
And to be fair the logging hit our rivers harder than any other single factor.
Huffman is a total tool. Just another sleazy guy in a suit pretending he’s a different kind of politician. He’s a rich suburbanite and not one of us.
Huffman wants that Eel River water for his cronies down south. The 2 basin partnership is a fraud. I am appalled that an organization like Cal Trout and the Humboldt BOS would go along with that. The Eels salmonid runs are in danger of extinction, but Huffman, our ineptBOS and Cal Trout dont care. We are being sold out. This is why we need redistricting and an entirety new BOS. The eels water should not be diverted south.
I am sure that Sonoma county has some serious hundred year old water rights that can’t be ignored. They use Eel river water to recharge their OWN aquifer. Now Sonoma county has been overdeveloped for water and that won’t stop.
As Global Warming asserts itself and development continues the issue will just get bigger. Water wars are here to stay and I am willing to bet Sonoma county will fight tooth and nail for all the water they can get.
Those old water rights from a time when water could be spent like a billionaire’s spare change are no longer realistic or valid and need to be changed, but who can make a precedent by destroying old laws when everything is built on exploiting the river?
Removing Scott Dam will help restore some of the fish population to the Eel, so it makes sense that environmental groups support it. Sonoma County has long standing water right to the lion’s share of Lake Mendocino water, and that isn’t going away any time soon.
As for the ridiculous number of large illegal grows, the environmental damage is obvious. “Whataboutism” doesn’t change the fact. And the oversupply has cratered the price. You can get outdoor grown weed for about $600 a pound around here. The for the typical small scale grower, the industry is circling around the drain now, and nothing is going to save it
Any long standing water right should be subordinate to saving the eel river salmonids. That’s the federal trump card favoring eliminating diversion.
Never under estimate another guys greed!