UKIAH, CA., 6/25/26 — People who came to the Ukiah Valley Conference Center on Tuesday evening wanting to weigh in on the future of the Potter Valley dams did not get to address a room. They got a ticket number.
Most walked in expecting a hearing. What they found was a waiting room — rows of chairs, mostly empty, and a handful of federal staffers. No panel to face. No microphone. The public comment everyone came for was happening — but it was one person at a time, behind a closed door, where no one else could hear it and recording wasn’t allowed.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is weighing Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s application to surrender its license for the century-old Potter Valley Project and decommission it — a plan that calls for removing the project’s two Eel River dams. The one-on-one sessions included the public commenter, a court reporter and a commission staffer. Speakers waited to be called by number. Staff assured them that the transcript would go up on FERC’s website in about 10 days.
For the press, that meant there was nothing to cover. No reporter could watch people address the government or capture a word of it as it happened.
It should not have been a surprise
The setup was no improvisation. FERC laid it out in the scoping document it issued May 22. “Individual oral comments will be taken on a one-on-one basis with a court reporter,” the notice reads — a format “designed to receive the maximum number of oral comments in a convenient way during the timeframe allotted.”
An appendix titled “Scoping Session Format and Conduct” adds the rest: commenters are called in ticket-number order, recorded interviews are barred from the session space, and speakers are limited to three to five minutes if the line runs long.
Not only is the format legal, it is standard. Scoping is not a hearing. Under federal environmental law, FERC has to gather and weigh public comment before it writes its environmental study, but nothing requires the commission to provide an open forum, and the public has no right to address the room. FERC uses the same court-reporter format at gas and power proceedings around the country. What is unusual is the stage — a fight that has split the north coast for years, handled in a near-empty room.
FERC says the format shortchanges no one. The agency “provides equal consideration to all comments received,” the notice says, whether spoken to the court reporter or filed in writing. On Wednesday morning, a second scoping session under the same format was also held at the conference center in Ukiah.Written comments are due by 5 p.m. Eastern time — 2 p.m. in Ukiah — on July 24, and can be filed electronically through FERC’s eFiling or eComment system under docket No. P-77-332.
When and through which media was this “Scoping Session” announced? What becomes of the “public’s” comments? What’s the next step from the FERC?
Nothing stops the public from holding its own public comment forum. Invite both sides. One speaker at a time for a set amount of time. Record it and set it to FERC.
FERC providing “equal consideration to all comments received” means they give exactly zero consideration to all public comments received. Most likely they are also giving zero consideration to any comments from the USDA. They have zero interest in listening to idiots like Brooke Rollins and other Trump stooges, not because they dislike the president but because they can’t run policy based on the opinions of idiots. They are an extremely powerful bunch that primarily work for the interests of the gigantic corporations that run the infrastructure they regulate. They take inputs from other agencies that have interest and they will
listen to those agencies if they know their business. Brooke Rollins and the current USDA is not one of those. She’s basically a former rodeo queen who unfortunately got kicked in the head by her horse too many times and now goes around spouting nonsense for MAGA and MAHA. She will help Elsinore arrange a buyout of Potter Valley Project for a dollar so they can charge $8000 an acre foot to the same people she smiled and shook hands with in January. All those folks who told supervisors Norvell and Cline to take that meeting should be under no illusions now. The Trump administration are a bunch of crooks. While American farmers suffer from the worst decisions that the government can make, the leaders smile and tell them it’s all going to be worth it when the country becomes great again. How long will that take? Stop asking questions and pump your $7-8-9 diesel. Bend over and take it for your country because it’s going to be the best after they’re done with you. Just wait.
It’s always the case now, and maybe always has been. The government absolutely does not care about regular working people. Definitely NOT in this county. They will make the decisions based on who pays them the most and they will sell us all out and then get elected AGAIN because at this point, the blame lies on us. For every 1 person angry about this issue, there are 10 who are completely oblivious to what’s going on and will do absolutely nothing to educate themselves. At the point, Americans are getting a taste of what apathy + democracy produces.
Hey, fellow commenters, I agree with all of you, and I am probably the most cynical about our current crooked government. But I like Caren C’s suggestion. I see dozens of comments in just about every article of the MV that are full of complaints, criticism, outrage, and at times witty derision for the powers that be. I agree with many of them. But now what? All of you in this particular Comments page seem better informed than most others about the Potter Valley Dam topic, so is your only solution to just “save up and move”? To where?
Caren is suggesting that we hold our own public forum about the dam removal. Maybe an outside facilitator could be invited to keep things civil. Anyone interested in actually doing something to foil the FERC?
“Save up and move” seems like a bit of an overreaction. I think there is a lot of misplaced blame associated with this. People want to blame PG&E, Newsom, Enviros, local electeds etc etc, but the real problem is that the dams are really old and falling apart and too expensive to repair. Things get old, sometimes they aren’t worth fixing. FERC won’t change that and PG&E has already made their decision. More debate on whether the dams should stay or go won’t solve that. That leaves a coupe options which is what we are seeing play out. Beg the only entity (the federal government) with enough money to take over and spend a billion dollars rebuilding Scott Dam, or, find a local solution that local water users can afford. The Feds seem to want to make this a culture war issue more than solve the problem and it seems very unlikely they will want to spend the money needed on a blue county in blue California. The SoCal district is only here because of the Feds, so they’re one and the same. The TwoBasin Solution doesn’t solve everyone’s problems but it’s partially funded, makes a lot of sense, and is probably the only thing that keeps a diversion going. Compromise isn’t sexy, but it’s probably the only thing that keeps the whole issue from being tied up in the courts for 20years.
-Ryan
This is the most rational response.
There is another option to build water infrastructure, which is a big reason the city of Ukiah is positioning itself to annex the surrounding parcels in the Ukiah Valley. The path to building more water infrastructure has a far more plausible path than chasing this devil bargain with the Feds and riverside county water district.
Thank you, Ryan and Urbanist, for your rational, well-founded comments. Instead of hoping the Washington, D.C. Feds will come save their old way of life, which includes dependency on a water source that is now unrealistic to maintain, they should be investing in ways to conserve water during the dry months and supporting the options that Urbanist suggests, which will help finance some of those conservation measures. Whether they like it or not, the enviros, Tribes, electeds, and other parties are doing the work and getting the financial and other resources needed to solve this problem in the only way that appears to be realistic. The City of Ukiah apparently has a lot more water in its water basin than a lot of the outlying towns, one of which will be Potter Valley. Get on board, people. The world is changing even for you.