Wednesday, October 9, 2024

As Dam Removal Nears, Letter Writer Warns of ‘Imminent Danger’ for Russian River Watershed Residents

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Welcome to our letters to the editor/opinion section. To submit yours for consideration, please send to matthewplafever@gmail.com. Please consider including an image to be used–either a photograph of you or something applicable to the letter. However, an image is not necessary for publication.

Remember opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect that of MendoFever nor have we checked the letters for accuracy.


The Russian River between Hopland and Cloverdale [Picture by Matt LaFever]

To the Editor,

Regarding the upcoming election, there are five candidates running for the House of Representatives in the 2nd Congressional District. Personally, I would have said anyone but Huffman because he doesn’t seem to be our friend or advocate in maintaining the water that has been diverted from the Eel to the Russian for over 100 years but I must add to that list Tief Gibbs because of her statements in her letter in the MendoFever.

First, she accuses Chris Coulombe of “politicizing the issue”, then states we should be “celebrating that they have found a way to ditch the dam and restore the Eel”. She goes on to say that “the rest of the world has moved on and that all parties have agreed that the lake should be eliminated”. I find the letter that Chris wrote articulate and addresses my concerns and many others I converse with. 

When I first became alarmed about the potential loss of our water, I watched the documentary that can be seen on YouTube “A Rivers Last Chance”. This problem started in the 1850s because of over-logging and fishing, floods, droughts, and most currently cannabis water diversions.

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Locally, we are being scapegoated for the distorted ideal of another dam destruction. There are at minimum 600,000 people in Mendocino, Lake, Sonoma, and Marin counties who rely on this water for drinking, firefighting, agriculture, recreation, and tourism.

There are many educated, selfless citizens, organizations, and committees who have been working tirelessly for many years to hopefully find a solution to this extremely complicated issue so that we who live in the Russian River watershed will not be ignored.

Who in their right mind quits their job before they find another one, or tears down their house until the new one is built?

I hope that the local citizenry will realize that this is an imminent danger and loss that requires us to get involved with the same passion that motivates some to go sit in a tree or chain themselves to gates and equipment to save our redwoods.

We need to be stirred now, before it is too late, and demand our representatives on all levels of our government from our supervisors to Congress that new infrastructure must be designed, funded, and built before the old is destroyed leaving us in a worse condition than we are in now.

Thankful to live in Mendocino County,

Randy Dorn
Redwood Valley, California

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Well said Randy. If this goes thru a lot of people who didn’t get educated on this subject will be looking around saying “ what just happened, no one told me about this”. Also Huffman is not our friend, he could care less about what this will do for our water supplies. He will be talking about how he removed two dams and saved and restored a bunch of habitat

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MendoFever Staff
MendoFever Staff
Editor's Note: Whenever an article's byline reads "MendoFever Staff", the contents of that article were not composed by any of our reporters. Types of writing that will be attributed to "MendoFever Staff" include press releases, letters to the editor, op-eds, obituaries— essentially writing that is not produced by a reporter.

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