MENDOCINO CO., 2/25/26 —The Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, local organizations, engineers, politicians, and community members have been exploring long-term water supply options ahead of PG&E’s plan to decommission the Potter Valley Project.
The commission’s most recent meeting this month looked at proposals such as raising Coyote Valley Dam at Lake Mendocino, which could significantly increase water supply in the aftermath of the decommissioning.
What is the Potter Valley Project?
The Potter Valley Project, owned by PG&E, is a hydroelectric facility that will be dismantled as soon as 2028. The Potter Valley Project diverts water from the Eel River to the Russian River watershed through two dams — the Scott Dam at Lake Pillsbury and Cape Horn Dam at Lake Van Arsdale. The two lakes supply water to communities throughout Mendocino and Sonoma counties. The water has been crucial for agricultural, municipal, and environmental uses.
About seven years ago, PG&E chose not to relicense the project, saying it was not profitable for the utility company. The project’s decommissioning could ultimately help restore fish on the Eel River but could also reduce water availability and affect nearby residents.
The Inland Water and Power Commission, which includes representatives from Mendocino County, the city of Ukiah and local water agencies, holds public meetings on the second Thursday of each month to discuss the end of the Potter Valley Project.
The decommissioning has raised various concerns among farmers and ranchers anxious about losing the water source. But Native groups, including the Round Valley Indian Tribes, are eager to see fish populations restored. Under a formal agreement with PG&E, the tribes will have water rights transferred to them.
Proposals for water storage and pumping
The Feb. 12 Inland Water and Power Commission meeting was packed with dozens of attendees at the county offices in Ukiah. Consulting engineers opened the meeting by presenting the pros and cons of building storage infrastructure and extracting local water.
Candace Horsley, who works as staff for the commission, said in an interview that recent meetings have mainly focused on the idea to raise Coyote Valley Dam at Lake Mendocino with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the structure and built it nearly 70 years ago.
Raising the dam could increase water availability, storage, and allow water to be pumped to Potter Valley and other areas that would be most impacted by the decommissioning.
However, raising the dam would also require altering nearby structures at Lake Mendocino, like raising campgrounds and parking lots, to accommodate the higher water level.
Horsley said that the time and cost it would take to complete such a project could mean the dam raising wouldn’t be completed for 20 to 30 years. She also said the Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study to analyze other storage options that could be built at Lake Mendocino.
“The feasibility study is to study ways to increase water storage at Lake Mendocino. It doesn’t necessarily mean just raising the dam, there’s other possible options,” Horsley said. “It’s to determine the best possible way to increase storage at Lake Mendocino.”
However, the feasibility study needs further funding to be completed by the Army Corps, and the water commission does not have enough money for the cost. Horsley said they will be relying on additional federal funding to proceed with the study. The federal government will inform the commission in March how much it can contribute.
Water rights and plans for a new facility
The Eel-Russian Project Authority is an organization formed between the Sonoma County Water Agency, Sonoma County, and the Inland Water and Power Commission. The authority has an agreement in place with PG&E and the Round Valley Indian Tribes regarding water rights.
PG&E will be transferring water rights of the Eel River diversion to the Round Valley Indian Tribes once the decommissioning takes place. The Round Valley Indian Tribes have agreed to lease part of those rights to the newly formed Eel-Russian Project Authority in exchange for yearly payments and protections for local fish species and ecological health.
The location of the water diversion is located at Lake Van Ars Dale on the Eel River in Mendocino County, but the Sonoma County Water Agency has had legal rights to a portion of the water diverted from the river for decades.
The Eel-Russian Project Authority is planning on constructing the New Eel-Russian Facility, also called NERF, at this water diversion on the Eel River. According to Horsley, once PG&E begins the decommissioning process, that is when the Eel-Russian Project Authority will begin constructing the new facility.
“You can have all the water in the world going down the Eel River, if you don’t have diversion facility and legal access to it, the people on the Russian River will never see the water,” Horsley said. “That’s why the water commission chose to go the diversion route and build the NERF. We went that route because that diversion is the top priority. PG&E owns the diversion now, but when they decommission, they will be transferring the legal ownership, and we will start building the new facilities while they decommission.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversees electric and gas companies like PG&E. FERC is still reviewing the company’s proposal to decommission the Potter Valley Project and had a deadline this past December to submit comments on the decommissioning.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins earlier in December filed a notice to intervene in the FERC proceedings for Potter Valley and also wrote an op-ed to The Mendocino Voice expressing her concerns about the 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,” Rollins wrote in the op-ed. “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.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Rollins’ notice of intervention “guarantees USDA’s ability to actively participate in the proceedings, protect its programs, and advocate for the farmers and communities who depend on the project’s reliable water flows.”
The next Inland Water and Power Commission meeting will be held March 12 at 5 p.m. at the county offices, 501 Low Gap Road, Ukiah. The meeting can be attended virtually or in person. For more information on the meetings and how to access the Zoom link, click here.
Once again local media has chosen to report the PVP decommissioning as a fait accompli, yet FERC has not made its final determination. Until environmental analyses are completed, reasonable alternatives are evaluated, and mitigation plans are developed, the consequences of removing the Eel River dams remain unknown.
FERC received close to 2,000 public comments and the majority spoke against dam removal. FERC has a responsibility to ensure that the path forward is lawful, informed, and protective of the public interest — all 700,000 of us. This is not a done deal!
The dams on the Eel are going to come down. The USACE has two more years of work to do on a feasibility study on Coyote Dam and associated facilities. PG&E isn’t due to submit the final plan for decommissioning until July. Absolutely nothing is going to be done about any of this for years to come. Plans upon plans will follow. The new Eel Russian plan will cost a billion dollars. Nothing about the numbers flying around on paper today is realistic. The system will be complex and extremely expensive. Some years rainfall will fill the lake. Other years the Eel diversion will be metering the uptake and charging accordingly. But imagine if a coalition of wineries and vineyards got together and demanded public assistance to help them dig ponds and drill wells for their businesses. Do you think people would go for it? Now imagine a coalition of wineries and vineyards got together and demanded government assistance to raise the height of a dam and build an enormous back pumping plant to provide the ag water for the grape growers at taxpayer expense. Do you think there’d be broad support? There may be some value in making Lake Mendocino larger for the downstream communities municipal water supplies during droughts. But Potter Valley needs to understand that they should pay for their own ponds and wells like the wineries do. It’s just business. It’ll be cheaper in the long run. The days of free water are gone. The new system should focus on supplying water to the Russian River communities in Sonoma County- the only place that will be able to afford the water bills that come with the new infrastructure.
Congratulations to “Pike Minnow Gourmet” for drilling right to the center of the matter. Not one reporter has addressed the question of water pricing. How much have the Potter Valley farmers been paying for that water? How much are they willing to pay for it in the future? Will that price be anywhere near the actual cost of building and operating the new diversion structure (or even of repairing and maintaining the existing ones)? Those are the only questions that really matter, yet nobody is asking them.
Right now there is a big push to build a project that will ensure water deliveries to those farmers (and those further downstream as well). But who is going to pay for that and how much will those farmers pay for the water? Almost certainly, the costs will not be borne by those who directly benefit. That is the history of water projects in the West.
I firmly believe in divine intervention, and that the dams will stand and remain as they have for over a century. It’s the cheapest option and the smartest option. Both facilities need retrofitted and upgraded. Also an upgraded fish passage will be necessary at Van Arsdale, but you will never get the fish up and over Scott Dam. Removing these dams is the most insane thing this region has ever considered, and we will never recover from it and will regret it forever. It’s insanity. SAVE LAKE PILLSBURY.
Potter Valley get ready to start paying your way with water. Vineyards are already struggling to sell their product in the market let alone rising water costs to make the stuff. Time to move on from the agrarian economy.
The agrarian economy can still be viable if the cost of water is factored in at a realistic price. I heard one of the Potter Valley residents say at a Supervisor meeting that their water rate is the envy of the state. Well I don’t know what that rate is but it won’t stay that low after the new system is built. What the new system is isn’t clear either. They should start pooling their resources and drilling wells and digging collective ponds asap though. There’s no way any other option will be cheaper. Trump’s not going to bail them out. The USDA sending that letter to FERC should have been a flash of lightning for them because it showed how ignorant the Brooke Rollins version of USDA is. FERC isn’t going to reject any surrender application they’re just going to attach conditions on how PG&E goes about closing up shop over there. The delay should give the ranchers time to pony up for their own water supply like the good boot strapping, red blooded Americans they are. Rugged independence is the hallmark of the American rancher lifestyle. They can do it without Daddy Trump. They’ll have to.
PMG, You are quite optimistic for them. Perhaps they will survive the double punch coming to them in terms of higher costs in water and declining demand in wine. I’m just being realistic that this community may need to diversify their economy in non-agrarian ways. Businesses and entrepreneurship come in all shapes and sizes even ones that don’t require acreage and subsidies. I mean this cohort voted for Daddy Trump by a large margin for the very opposite reason you speak being “rugged independence”. They think they are in a club and they are suffering from the same delusion all the MAGAs voted for him on.
The “environmentalists” are just as malignant as any MAGA kook. Neither care about normal folks.
The cheapest thing for Potter Valley farmers to do is what most farmers do: dig wells and storage ponds. But they still have an advantage others don’t have: water from the Eel River to fill the aquifer their wells tap into. That water will be available in the winter, not summer, so their fields can be flooded to let the water seep down into the ground, and pumped out when needed. If the farmer is really clever, they can be a good environmentalist by timing the flooded field so it can be used by migrating waterfowl.