Proponents of a post-dam diversion have decided what kind of structure they’ll ask for when PG&E submits its license surrender application for the Potter Valley Project. A number of questions have yet to be answered, especially about sediment management and how much water will continue to flow from the Eel into the Russian River. But after months of committee meetings and analyses across a wide spectrum of interest groups, a new joint powers authority decided unanimously on March 19 to pursue a pump station that would divert water from the Eel River into the Russian River during high flows.
The Eel Russian Project Authority consists of representatives from Sonoma Water, the county of Sonoma, Mendocino County Inland Water & Power Commission (or IWPC, which is itself a consortium of local governments and water agencies), and the Round Valley Indian Tribes. It is negotiating with PG&E during the process of decommissioning Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury, and Cape Horn Dam, near the tunnel that diverts water from the Eel into the Russian River. It will also have the legal authority to own, build and operate the new diversion facility where Cape Horn Dam is now.
In August, Russian River water users and the Round Valley Indian Tribes asked PG&E, which owns and operates the Potter Valley Project, to include one of two possible alternatives in its license surrender application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. PG&E said it wanted to negotiate with a governmental body, so the new Authority was formed. PG&E is not bound to accept the Authority’s request to include its preference in its submission to FERC, and FERC can accept it, reject it, or ask for modifications. As James Russ, representing the Round Valley Indian Tribes, noted, “PG&E seems to change their mind quite often, and sometimes it can be very quickly. They can do a 180 degree turn. So I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page at this point in time.”
In a March 13 letter to the editor in the Press Democrat, Dave Canny, PG&E Vice President for the North Coast Region, wrote that the company “still supports the concept of a diversion with fish passage;” but that it was not interested in seeking a nonpower license from FERC on behalf of the proponents, “which would cause delays and expenses for our customers.”
Though PG&E is often referred to as “a black box,” the IWPC hired engineering consultant Tom Johnson to design two possible diversion facilities up to 30%, to get enough information about each to decide which one was worth pursuing.
The two alternatives are a pump station, a series of seven pumps that would divert the water during the wet season, and a roughened channel, or an 800-foot-long section of the river that would be engineered with a 3% slope and filled with carefully placed boulders to simulate a somewhat natural flow and transfer the water using gravity.
Though the roughened channel would not use electricity, environmental groups opposed it from the outset because they feared that if anything went wrong, it would be more likely to harm fish passage than a pump malfunction, which would have a more direct effect on water users in the Russian River watershed. Johnson extolled the benefits of the pump station in his report to the Eel Russian Project Authority directors at their March 19 meeting. “It was just superior because of the lower gradient, less energy that needed to be dissipated by the channel itself, (and it) didn’t necessarily have big twelve and fourteen foot boulders with water crashing about,” he reflected. “All in, the pump station was always going to be a better fish passage alternative.”
Johnson said the channel also had the potential to cause more sediment buildup than the pump station. At the 30% design level, the two options looked like they would cost about the same to build, though the margin of error was too high to be sure. Running the pump station will cost water users an estimated $5 to $10 an acre foot, but the lower cost of water using the roughened channel scenario was the only criteria where the channel won out over the pumps, in the opinion of the members of the technical advisory group that studied the matter.
And, while there are examples of roughened channels being used in waterways, they are rarely used in the mainstem of a river as powerful as the Eel in winter. Johnson noted that pumps are a little more tried and true. “The pump station, while it is a complicated object,” he acknowledged; “It’s a pump station. Y’all are water agencies. Y’all know how pump stations work.”
The station would use about one megawatt of power per year to operate, and it would be equipped with a backup generator in case it fails during a winter storm, which is likely in rural Potter Valley.
James Russ, representing the Round Valley Indian Tribes, noted that the Potter Valley Project dams aren’t the only ones coming down in the larger region. “Probably everybody in this room knows that the dams up on the Klamath are being removed,” he said. “Are there lessons to be learned from what’s going on up there?”
David Manning, Environmental Resources Manager for Sonoma Water, replied that there will be lessons to be learned about restoration from the Klamath, including, “how fish will deal with the ongoing impacts post dam removal, and how quickly they recover from the restoration of the lakebed. Those are all great examples that can be taken from the Klamath dam removals and brought to the Eel for this project.”
Sonoma Water has received a $2 million Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for planning to bring the design of the pump station up to 60%. Manning expects to hire an expert this year, and for the work to take another two and a half years. The cost share is 65% federal and 35% local.
The actual dam removal could take place over the course of one year, which would release a huge amount of sediment all at once, or over the course of a few years, which would spread out the impact. Johnson said a lot of modeling needs to be done to plan for various scenarios, but, “Whether that is something PG&E is going to do at some point in time is unclear. It needs to be done, and I’m certain it will be done before the final designs for a new diversion facility are in place. It’s just unclear who and when, and who’s going to take the lead on making that happen.
And a team of attorneys is working on the water supply agreements, “Because that is a burning question,” Johnson noted. “Everyone needs to know, how much water?”
Dams are condoms. The sediment is the endometrial layer. Water is the woman’s cum. The animal and fish bodies are the semen.
Way to prevent fertility and then wonder why the ocean fisheries are failing.
And I’m confused. Did fish ever originally jump over the mountain between the Russian and the Eel or are they just trying to get the fish as far up the river as possible? I must have missed something…
A watershed map with these articles would be key for public understanding
So for the first time there is sort of a “plan.”
It seems to me that the main, or perhaps only, question is:
Why in the world would anyone want to pump water from a flooding Eel River into a flooding Russian River?
To make sure Lake Mendocino is topped off. There needs to be a lot more storage developed, and lot more infrastructure developed. The hope is that we can continue to divert the same amount of water but in the winter instead of in the summer. Our management of water will need to change accordingly.
Storage wise, we will need to raise Coyote Dam and adjust how it is managed by looking at it as a 3-5 year reservoir instead of a 1 year reservoir. We will need to identify areas for groundwater recharge to top off aquifers. There will need to be a shift in water rights to divert and store water in winter/early spring instead of diverting spring/summer.
Kind of takes Potter Valley out of the Potter Valley Project, doesn’t it?
I mean to say that all the benefits of these two plans go to Lake Mendocino and, of course to Ukiah and Redwood Valley.
Potter Valley is in for a total loss of water, except for what might be pumped from the pumped deluge as it goes by in the wet winter.
Potter Valley is the place nature blessed with its amazing proximity to the wonderful, snow fed Eel, a matter of not much more than a mile!
We have perhaps gained as much as any other place, but that is no reason to slight us now.
I do not think this matter should be regarded as settled until everyone’s needs are considered.
Some gave some and some gave all, to which I say the Eel has long gave more than it’s share to the once barren lands of Potter Valley and the once rolling grassland hills of Sonoma and Marin counties that know have row after row of water sucking wine bottle suckers.
We too have the chance to right a wrong long ago perpetrated upon a land and it’s native people, so just like the mighty Kalamath now flows free so should the Eel ending the flow of water through the blood stained canals and tunnels Van Arsdale sought to build with his ditch digging arch enemies from his time in the Army, as the age of Rockefeller and Carnegie is gone an so with it comes the second coming of nature free and wild.
The Klamath Dams are still in place. Only one has partially been removed thus far. And last month 800,000 fishlings died on the first restocking effort. People don’t seem to understand the impact of that much sediment on an ecosystem. It will happen below Lake Pillsbury too once Scott Dam is removed. The river below Lake Pillsbury will be bone dry in the fall every year. There is no water going into the Gravelly Valley in the fall. None, I know because I hunt there every September. The only reason there is water at all in that portion of the Eel River in the fall is because there is a reservoir there. Once that reservoir is gone the Eel above Van Arsdale will be dry most years in the fall. How will fish handle that? I’ve been hunting there since the early ‘80s. People that support dam removal should visit the lake in September and October to see for themselves. Not to mention the economic impacts that the area will suffer from. Hundreds of homes, many businesses, a U.S. Forest Service station, a volunteer fire department and thousands of recreational users will lose their place. A place that has been utilized in these ways for 120 years. Where do you think the 500 Tule Elk that live at Pillsbury will go once the lake is gone. They will migrate in the Potter Valley and closer into Upper Lake to sustain themselves. They will devastate ranchland looking for water and food once the lake is gone. The impacts of this proposal are so much underestimated it’s ridiculous. It is insanity. I 100% oppose dam removal. The system in place can be better managed. PG&E should be considered an operator of last resort. They bought into this idea during their inception as a utility company. Now that they are losing money by operating this project should not let them off the hook to manage the prescriptive utility they have been providing the entire time. Leaving nearly 1 million people without the water supply that they have been providing for almost 80 years. It wasn’t alway owned by PG&E. But they bought the original utility company that created the lake and the Potter Valley project. The water diverted flows almost to the GG Bridge supplying much of Marin County even. Claiming the dam is seismically unsafe is a cop out. That damn is incredibly built and huge and massive. That dam would never fail. It has been in place since 1906, and before. This whole proposal is insanity. It will ruin water security in the Ukiah Valley and south. People blame grape growers but a majority of vineyards here are dry farmed and only use irrigation for frost protection. Or drip irrigation from on-site ponds. Blaming the grape growers is just creating an easy scapegoat target. The fish that this proposal is trying to save are destined for extinction because of climate change. There is no form of human intervention that could possibly stop this. Humans need to stop worrying about saving fish that will go extinct anyways and try and save themselves by securing an existing water supply. It’s madness. Maybe Trump will sign an executive order to save the lake once he is elected. I hate to go there but this situation is insane and we are coming down to the wire. And I hate Trump but in a circumstance like this the incumbent will be no help. I told myself I wouldn’t comment on this topic on this platform anymore, because my blood pressure goes through the roof, but after months of keeping my mouth shut I can’t take it. I just want to leave California. I said it before. You won’t miss me. Nor will I miss you. Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee bound. I can’t leave fast enough but I’m committed to taking care of elderly parents for now so I’m stuck here. California is no longer the place I grew up. You can have it and the desert it will become. I usually leave these comments with a peaceful note but if you support this dam removal project then burn in hell with our congressman and assemblyman that proposed it. And I’m posting this with my actual name. Not some catchy moniker.
Thank you for the truth. Myself and my family have lived in Potter Valley for decades. Grandparents remember how dry Potter Valley was before the tunnel was build to bring the Eel river water into the valley for families and agriculture.
I totally agree with Bradley Beck. This has to be the worst idea ever. I hate it for all the property owners in the lake area who will see their property devalued. Probably Potter also.