Editor’s note: The following is a letter to the editor. The opinions expressed in this letter are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Mendocino Voice. If you would like to submit a letter to the editor feel free to write to info@mendovoice.com.
Dear Editor:
The heavy hand of California’s state government has gone unchecked for decades. The results? Burned-out cities and landscapes. Manmade water crises. A widening socioeconomic divide.
It breaks my heart that our nation’s largest food-producing state has chosen special interests and political ambition over its farmers, ranchers and rural communities time and time again.
The radical leadership of the state of California has treated the needs of fish as more important than the needs of the farmers and ranchers — the nation’s original conservationists.
Rural communities need water access to survive, yet California continues to ignore the needs of the very people who are the most connected to the land and water.
Because of this continued pressure from California, the Scott and Cape Horn dams have been proposed for decommissioning. The proposed surrender and decommissioning plan for the Potter Valley hydroelectric project will have a profoundly negative and irreversible impact on local farmers, ranchers and agricultural producers. These closures will effectively cut off any access to water, the lifeblood those producers rely on to feed the country and world.
These radical actions would also leave families vulnerable to more droughts and wildfire.
For over a hundred years, legacy farmers in Potter Valley have put this water to good use after first using it to generate electricity. This has been a symbiotic relationship between farmers, power generators and the environment.
Let’s put this into perspective. According to the latest agriculture census, the counties of Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma, Humboldt, and Marin have sold a combined total of over $1.4 billion of agricultural products. That’s well over $4.2 billion in extra economic activity due to agriculture. Farmers should be thanked for their productivity, not punished for it.
Make no mistake. If the decommissioning goes through, hundreds of legacy farms and this area’s rich agricultural heritage will be lost.
A government by the people should be for the people. California’s war on agriculture has gone unchecked to the detriment of us all.
Under the Trump administration, that war ends now.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued two notices, Project Number 77-318 and 77-332, related to the decommissioning plan. Rest assured that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will actively engage to ensure this plan’s strict compliance with the law.
But we can’t do it alone.
Recently, I received a letter from over 920 concerned residents, all highlighting critical flaws in the proposed decommissioning plan. These include the elimination of water supply to local communities without viable alternatives; the negative impact that removal will have on water quality and drinking water safety for downstream communities, farms and ecosystems; and the diminished capacity for wildland firefighting in one of the most fire-prone regions of the country.
We need more of the 750,000 residents that are served by the Potter Valley Project and its dams to stand up for agriculture and for themselves. The current deadline to file comments has been extended and now closes on Dec. 19 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time.
I want you to know you are not alone in this righteous fight, which strikes at the very heart of our freedoms. The Trump administration is listening, and we are committed to working across the government to protect Potter Valley’s water supply and the communities and prime farmland that it serves.
Brooke Rollins
Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Yes, we need all the help we can get, this will end up being a disaster, if the dam is removed,
Farmers have chosen themselves over fishermen is what has really happened. Screw farmers in inland Mendocino county. Fisherman are just as if not more important.
Why?
Save Lake Pillsbury! It is a critical water source in a fire prone area. Not to mention the farmers, wildlife & families that rely on this vital water source!!
You & Bobby should know better. Farmers are no more important than fisherman & both are less important than fish.
1. You are not more connected to the land than anyone else.
2. You have stolen the language of the left, more specifically the language of indigenous water rights activism.
3. Pg and E, a major evil, our corporate overlord holds our lives in their power full hands
4. Trump doesn’t care in the slightest. Neither does Newsom
5. Farmers are growing mostly wine and weed, not food
6. The Klamath is doing great, as a precedent example
7. The areas that have the most water brought by the most unnatural means will have the most trouble maintaining water in the future. Be it Potter Valley or L.A. Potter is historically dry, it is not historically misty moist marshland.
8. Lolsel forever
You said it!
Quite the diatribe. The state is not in control of the dam removal. PGnE is the owner. They do not want to bear the costs of making a 100+ year old dam safe. They have decided to not renew their FEDERAL permit. None of this has anything to do with the state of California. I am horrified by this situation also. It has been seven years and various attempts at working on another solution. Keep politics out of this and spend your energy on helping to find a solution. Your letter to the editor is filled with false statements.
Exactly, and our most lethal fire, the 2017 potter/redwood valley fire, was started by….PG and E!! This is a bipartisan problem, in that there is no bi. Just a problem.
Return both river systems to their natural state please.
It has to happen eventually so better now than latter.
Brooke Rollins is obviously a stupud idiot.
GREAT LETTER from our Secretary of Agriculture! It’s about time tho truth was told.
California Farmers The Next Endangered Species.
Farmers are tools of the state that believe water is theirs. Water isn’t theirs. It’s the blood of the earth and they suck it up like vampires for their own profit. Farmers act like they’re the only ones who are loosing their way of life. Hello!? That’s what everyone else has been crying about too! Now it’s in your backyard, now you might have to work for a corporation like the rest of us! Rough ain’t it!!?? Grow food for your local populations within a 200 mile radius, THEN we’ll talk about fighting for water.
California farmers small and large have been under intense pressure from numerous government agencies for many years. The Air Resources Board Water Resources Water Quality Control Board
Department of Pesticide Regulation etc.
A lot of new regulations and expenses seem to inundate legitimate farmers at
the worst time.
I speak from my experience as a producer
and county Ag biologist.
As they should be! They’re demanding we reverse watershed an entire ecosystem for their profit!! They don’t even hire the local youth! It’s all the immigrants the claim to be against! Ya’ll are loosing this fight for a reason!
Yes, I remember when they were forced to provide shade for their migrant workers. So much pressure. (Eyes rolling)
I don’t think you should be flexing your county ag biologist title…
How does the ag dc person even know about poor old lake pullsberry? Let alone their free water down the potter valley
The Trumpanzie administration is, once again, using sensational false propaganda to misdirect and misinform the public, in order to deflect responsibility for its own failed governance. The number one truth – PG&E is shutting down their dam because its no longer profitable. It is in fact the Trump Administration that is approving PG&E’s action. And, California State Government has no authority to override the Trump administration’s approval to remove the dam. But being champions of deception, its only natural the Trump moron administration wants to change reality to blame California for causing this hot stinking mess. What a second term Trump presidency has shown us is, they govern America for the corporation$, by the corporation$, and everyone else be damned!
So true. And I honestly can’t for the life of me believe that no one is connecting the 2017 fires( for which pg and e is still paying compensation) and this dam removal.
Is this corporate vengeance? Who knows, but either way pg and e is responsible for it all
Stop the dam removal! We need more water storage, not less. This water supplies thousands of people drinking water, economic water, and fire suppression water. Dam Removal will effectively kill the economy this water supplies to thousands.
The economics of the water aren’t trickling tho’
Potter is being wagged like a dog’s tail
Cut the grapes down and we have plenty of water.
So who would administer the turnover of the dams on behalf of “The American People” as no federal agency has stepped up to take ownership over the last how many years and 1.5 terms of Mr.Trumps administration. The Army Corps of Engineers have made an agreed upon plan to raise the federal overseen dam at Lake Mendocino to ease water issues for the 100s of thousands south leaving Potter Valley without the ability to flood fields and yards as the preferred method of keeping its green mark in the sometimes brown landscape that surrounds.
So unless someone is willing to purchase and take on the operation of a privately administered piece of property it then falls to its owners to dictate how and when it will be left and they have found state,county, federally recognized sovereign, and non profits who are willing to work with them towards the end of a project they themselves see as being the best path without liability forward.
So if the farmers of Potter Valley didn’t become vocal until the last call-out, and the Save Lake Pillsbury group made up mostly of Jackie Gleason dream believers that will loose a cabin in the woods overlooking a lake soon turned meadow haven’t seemed to have been on the tip of the tongue of this long known and wished outcome as they knew their often Sonoma based homesteads have already been saved from their counties plans and agreements of loose one right and raising another; then let that moment of silence over years be the same as the deafening of machines removing a lost cause.
I am the author of a proposal to bring water from the Columbia river across Oregon, and then into northern California. It would pay for itself many times over. But I’m not sure it’s worth the aggravation after listening to the above posts. It is fair to ask whether California deserves help. California’s leaders make choices—sometimes baffling ones—that can injure their own farmers and rural communities. When a state actively dismantles water infrastructure and calls it progress, it is natural to feel frustration. It can make a person wonder: why should anyone in Oregon, Washington, or anywhere else lift a finger to “save” them from their own decisions?
Here is the honest answer. The Sharing River is not a gift to California politicians. It is not a bailout of Sacramento. It is a contract with the American people—because the real recipients are not lawmakers. The real recipients are farmers who grow food, families who depend on stable water supplies, communities that survive on agriculture, and everyone across the country who buys what those farms produce. California’s farms feed America and large parts of the world. When California agriculture suffers, the pain does not stay inside California. It shows up in food prices, supply instability, job losses, and economic ripple effects far beyond state lines.
This is why the Sharing River project must be designed as a disciplined system, not an act of generosity. Water is not charity. Water is infrastructure. If new water is made available, it must be delivered under enforceable rules—through take-or-pay commitments, verified offtakes, rate discipline, and strong oversight that protects the source states first. The goal is to build a structure that works even when politics misbehaves, because politics always will. The lesson of the West is that water cannot be governed on goodwill alone.
So, if someone says, “Why help an unworthy recipient?” the answer is simple: we are not helping a government. We are stabilizing a region. We are protecting food. We are acting like a country that understands that resilience is national, not tribal. And we are doing it in a way that insists on accountability, not gratitude.
If California refuses to be a responsible partner, the project should not proceed. But if a lawful, enforceable framework can be built—one that benefits Oregon first, protects the river first, and requires real financial commitment from those who use the water—then this becomes something bigger than California. It becomes an American project, done for American reasons.
Dear Mr. Morgan,
That was an excellent post. I especially agree with the following sentiments:
“Water is infrastructure. If new water is made available, it must be delivered under enforceable rules—through take-or-pay commitments, verified offtakes, rate discipline, and strong oversight that protects the source states first. The goal is to build a structure that works even when politics misbehaves, because politics always will. The lesson of the West is that water cannot be governed on goodwill alone.”
” We are acting like a country that understands that resilience is national, not tribal. And we are doing it in a way that insists on accountability, not gratitude.”
This sober, practical, legal agreements are essential groundwork infrastructure for an important utility project to succeed long-term. A pipeline from WA/OR to NorCal would assuredly pay for itself. A pipeline from Idaho to Arizona would similarly pay for itself. And its not a bad idea. However, generally speaking there is plenty of water in both places: they’re just not looking in the right places.
If you have connections to the type of capital, legal resources, and planning to execute a project like that, I have a cheaper, easier, more local way to accomplish the goal, if you aren’t too attached to the project you composed. Still a pipeline, just a dramatically shorter one within the counties where its needed. Cheers.