Saturday, February 15, 2025

With $15M grant, Two-Basin Solution gets green light to transform Eel River

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The following is a press release issued by the Office of U.S. Representative Jared Huffman:


The Middle Fork of the Eel River Featured
The Middle Fork of the Eel River [Photo by Matt LaFever]

Today, U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (CA-02) announced that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has awarded Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Sonoma County Water Agency $15 million toward implementing the Two-Basin Solution.

The funds through the Inflation Reduction Act will fund a major Eel River estuary project supported by the tribes and put a down payment on construction of a new wintertime diversion to the Russian River following the removal of two salmon-blocking dams on the Eel.

“This funding shows what can be accomplished thanks to the strong partnerships in the Eel and Russian river basins. We’ve now reached a significant milestone in restoring salmon and other aquatic life in the Eel River while protecting a key water supply for communities in Mendocino, Sonoma, and Marin counties,” said Rep. Jared Huffman.

The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. plans to remove Scott and Van Arsdale dams that no longer produce electricity but prevent salmon from reaching 200 miles of spawning habitat. Round Valley Indians Tribes and Sonoma Water worked together on the application and are also working with Mendicino Inland Water and Power Commission on a plan that will benefit both basins.

“This award is a critical step towards achieving the co-equal goals of the Two-Basin Solution and is needed to begin the process of restoring the Eel River fishery and community healing for our people,” RVIT President Joseph Parker said. “I commend the leadership of Congressman Huffman and that of Commissioner Touton and the Reclamation team in working with Round Valley and Sonoma Water to obtain this funding.  The even split between basins is a historic first and establishes the precedent of equality that Round Valley, in conjunction with our partners, have been pursuing for many years.”

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“The Bureau of Reclamation funding will help ensure a Two-Basin Solution can be achieved for Eel and Russian river basin communities. This funding will provide needed resources to secure regional water needs while restoring fisheries,” said Sonoma County Supervisor and Sonoma Water Director Lynda Hopkins. “We are thankful for the leadership of Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Touton and Representative Huffman for securing these critical funds.” 

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17 COMMENTS

  1. Eel River estuary project?
    It is the first time I have ever seen this mentioned in all the thousands of pages of BS.
    What is the project and what possible connection can it have to removing the Potter Valley dams a hundred miles upstream?

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  2. How about a follow-up article detailing what this money will actually do? A down payment on a huge project is a little vague, on the Congress man’s part. Is this money just to do studies to engineer a new diversion, or figure out how to create storage, or is there any money for shovels in the ground?

    • I think it’s to buy it vs abandon it, thus maintaining the diversion as opposed to not. Meaning water will still be diverted seasonally.

    • Since 2021 when PG&E discovered a broken transformer in the power house. PG&E originally planned to fix it, but changed its mind in 2022.

  3. If I may take this opportunity to highlight the irony that Alexander von Humboldt was the first real significant publishing on the cultural effects of the environment and the civilization around those textile and minerals that are in natural abundance.
    The effects of man on the environment in His “Essay on New Spain”…the canopy of the forest and the forest floor help retain water in the shade and life cycle of healthy forests.
    The National Park and Registry Critical analysis in 2006 made National Standards for the entire town and mill of Scotia, Ca
    The cement dam with the train and rail road pieces at Fireman’s Park, the Ball Field, and Park have all been neglected and maintenance defferred if at all since Rex Bohn and Louisiana Pacific let the Maxim Corps. Bend the county and the forest over.
    It seems that clear cutting paid itself off in the Foreign Cartel Black Market and the Confidential Stakeholder interests …may need a remedial action of audit
    The restocking of Salmon is one of the many uses of the log ponds behind the mill. It mill.
    The Fireman’s Salmon DERBY during the fall run would be just in time for the logging camps to seek camp space along the river banks.
    The town would already be prepared and the Churches were the original resource centers.
    The scheduled feasts of Seasonal Solstice can be appreciated by all, the gathering helped folks help each other with our getting sent to five different case workers and all that office jaz of interrupting frustrations.
    I have witnessed men in Rio Dell and Scotia begging for meat and cheese…..i witnessed another man eating a raw steak because he jad nowhere to cook it.
    Four terms with Bohn and Arkley sued the county and city every chance he got and the Bohn crowd finds that beating down the indigent people is humorous.
    If there is any real effort to restore the Salmon Habitat on the Eel they must include and audit of Scotia and what Rex and Michelle Bushnell have been up to

  4. I urge those affected to get the back story and the facts about this project. PGE was basically forced to release so much water for salmon they could no longer produce power, or maintain the Potter Valley Project with energy revenue. The faux environmentalists bankrupted this project, leaving PGE with no option but to surrender its licence. They also wanted the diversion tunnel demolished leaving millions of people without a reliable source of water in dry years. The compromise is, “We’ll allow a new tunnel to be built, but we will control when and how much water flows through it.” Mendocino, Sonoma, and all the cities in between are about to see water rates sky rocket, while having their water use severely cut. Go to the California Water For Food and People Movement on facebook to learn more. You can use the search box and type in “Eel River.” Jared Huffman is California’s one-man wrecking ball.

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    • PG&E were losing money on the operation of the dams since the 60’s. An assignment to the Potter Valley Project was the death knell of a career in PG&E management. By the early 2000’s the PVP was loosing $10mill. per year. The payoff was that the Democratic Party gave PG$E all kinds of perks at the PUC and elsewhere for diverting water for development of vineyards and endless suburbs in Sonoma County. Then the studies came in that showed that the Scott Dam is a disaster waiting to happen. That was apparent to anyone who knew the history of its construction, when they had to make a right turn to get around a rock monolith that they mistakenly thought was bedrock.
      Grapes are saturating the market. The diversion has allowed agricultural and urban mismanagement of local watersheds and landscapes. And in order to turn land and water into money, vintners are claiming that children will go to bed without a drink of water. 70% of the water goes to “agriculture” that produces very little food.

  5. There is truth and then there is truth….

    Removal of the Eel River dams has not been approved. PG&E plans to file its official surrender & decommissioning plan with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in July 2025; an extensive environmental review will follow and there will be opportunity for public comment.

    The “two-basin” solution was developed without consideration for Lake County stakeholders. The County of Lake County currently has an impact study underway now and the results are expected this Spring.

    Removal of Scott Dam will open 35-40 river and stream miles of fishery habitat within the 288 square mile Eel River Watershed. Big difference between river miles and square miles.

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    • If “truth” is a priority to you, then best to get the immutable facts straight, otherwise your “truth” entertains false pretenses.
      Double, and maybe triple, check your work so you can “Keep it Real” with confidence.

      The Eel River watershed is MUCH larger than you imagine.
      It drains 3,971 square miles.
      The main stem is roughly 196 miles long from the mouth to the Headwaters on Bald Mt..

      The North Fork alone drains 286 square miles.

      Watershed area above Scott Dam – 289 sq mi.
      Watershed area above Cape Horn Dam – 349 sq mi

      Source: PVID
      pottervalleywater.org/eel_river_watershed_data.html

      ?————

      Potential Chinook Salmon habitat was estimated between 55-79 mi for spawning and rearing; Potential steelhead trout habitat was estimated between 198-288 mi for spawning and between 111-181 mi for rearing.
      These figures are river and stream miles, NOT square miles.

      Source:
      An Estimation of Potential Salmonid Habitat Capacity in the Upper Mainstem Eel River, California – Cooper, 2017

      Chinook spawn & rear in the lower gradient river flows.
      Steelhead spawn in the higher gradient creeks & streams and rear in both the creeks and river, thus there is a greater amount of habitat available to them.

      One reason Lake County Government was not given great consideration by FERC is, primarily, because they, the Federal ENERGY Regulatory Commission, does not have the mandate nor jurisdiction to oversee & address Lake County’s concerns because those concerns are secondary to the dams and their direct effects (Energy; Structural, Fire, Seismic, & Public etc safety of licensed facilities, etc). FERC’s mandate is to license & regulate At-Scale Energy projects, the transport of those energy resources, and those energy markets, not Recreation, Zoning, or private land use.
      Second reason, Lake County Gov reps were absent from all the initial Agency and Public scoping & comment meetings that were held about 6 years ago.
      These meetings were all announced well in advance and are a matter of public record, meaning Lake County Gov knew about the meetings and, for whatever reason someone (or many someones there) chose not to engage with FERC at that time.
      But hey, better late than never.

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  6. I am thinking that the downstream agricultural interests are going to need to spend well over the grant amount to maintain enough water to stay viable. The salmon populations will continue to decline due to global warming no matter how many dams are removed. Then will the landowners whose property values decline have the opportunity to have their property taxes lowered because of said decline.

    Kind of a shame PG&E can’t just work out a deal to sell the power generation facility to to a data center developer as they seem to be searching all over for spare capacity to power their projects.

  7. It is nice to see all this belated discussion, even if it is hard to find on the main MF page and the notification feature does not seem to work.
    Mainly there is no mention of what kind of “…major Eel River estuary project” is planned or its share of the money.
    Obviously, Potter Valley Project water ends up in the estuary (one or two hundred miles away), but why in the world does Huffman need to connect them here?
    Something misleading going on?

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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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