MENDOCINO CO., 6/18/26 — Federal agriculture and interior officials convened a meeting Monday at the White House with PG&E and a Southern California water district over the future of the Eel River — and the tribe with senior water rights on that river was not in the room.
The Round Valley Indian Tribes said Wednesday that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had called the meeting, which also included Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and representatives of the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District. The subject was the Potter Valley Project, a hydroelectric complex on the Eel River that PG&E has moved to decommission.
“Her decision not to engage in government-to-government consultation prior to taking these actions is deeply troubling,” Round Valley Indian Tribes President Joseph Parker said.
Round Valley has spent years at the negotiating table with Russian River water users working out what the parties call the Two-Basin Solution — a plan to allow salmon recovery on the Eel while keeping water flowing to communities that had come to rely on diversions from the north. Parker said the administration, by pulling in a Southern California water district without notifying the tribe, is threatening to unravel that work.
The concern runs deeper than a procedural slight. Round Valley holds senior federal reserved water rights to the Eel River — rights rooted in federal Indian law that predate California’s water system and take priority over most other claims when water is short. The tribe said it is prepared to use them.
“We are committed to using every available tool to defend and promote it,” Parker said, referring to the Two-Basin Solution, “including assertion of our senior federal reserved water and fishing rights.”
Agriculture Secretary Rollins opposes the surrender application
Rollins has been pushing on the project for months. The U.S. Department of Agriculture filed formal comments and a notice of intervention in the relevant federal proceeding on Dec. 19, opposing PG&E’s application to surrender its license and decommission the dams. The Interior Department had intervened in the same proceeding more than three weeks earlier, on Nov. 26. Neither filing named the Elsinore district as a preferred buyer.
The pivot to backing a specific Southern California district came later, through social media posts and White House meetings.
Monday’s session added Interior Secretary Burgum to the picture, which the tribe said raises a separate concern: the Interior Department carries a federal trust responsibility to tribal nations — a legal duty that requires consultation before the government takes positions that could affect assets held in trust, including reserved water rights. Interior’s own November filing cited that trust obligation — under 25 U.S.C. 2 — as one of the statutes it intended to invoke in the proceeding. The agency has not consulted Round Valley, Parker said.
Moreover, neither Rollins nor officials from Elsinore has accepted an invitation from Round Valley to visit the reservation, Parker said.
If Elsinore gets the rights, expect water prices to sky-rocket
The Elsinore district’s internal memos put 50,000 acre-feet of Eel River water annually under the district’s potential control — water it could charge downstream water users to access. But PG&E records don’t line up with that number.
A PG&E presentation produced in the same records request shows that actual annual diversions through the project averaged roughly 40,000 acre-feet in recent years — well below the assumed 50,000 — and have trended down sharply for decades. And the replacement now being designed would move less water still: Sonoma Water, which would operate the new Eel-Russian facility, projects average diversions of about 30,000 acre-feet a year, with the potential for more if storage is added at Lake Mendocino or in Potter Valley.
The Elsinore district serves more than 163,000 people in Southern California — over 500 miles from the Eel River. The district never planned to pipe that water south. Internal memos show the plan was to buy the rights on the cheap and sell the water back to the same farmers and cities already using it, at a steep markup.
Elsinore director Darcy Burke valued the rights at $400 million, based on selling 50,000 acre-feet a year at $8,000 per acre-foot — more than 200 times what local farmers pay today. She put the overall value as high as $850 million. A separate set of talking points, labeled “Message Maps,” advised the district to pressure PG&E into handing over the entire project for $1 — arguing the utility should be glad to unload a money-loser.
In December, Elsinore filed formal opposition to PG&E’s decommissioning plan with federal regulators. The filing, signed by manager Thomas and submitted through outside counsel, raised the Safe Drinking Water Act and California’s Human Right to Water as grounds for blocking decommissioning. It made no mention of the district’s financial analyses or its interest in acquiring the project.
The Eel and the Round Valley tribes
The Potter Valley Project’s history with Round Valley is long and one-sided. The dams went up more than a century ago without tribal consent. The diversions sent Eel River water into the Russian River basin, where downstream users staked claims over generations. The tribe got nothing from the arrangement.
“Yet we live under its adverse effects daily,” Parker said.
PG&E’s decision to walk away opened a rare window to restore salmon runs on the Eel and begin redressing that history. Parker said. Round Valley wants restoration to go forward without abandoning Russian River communities — which is the point of the Two-Basin Solution — but the tribe must be at the table for any arrangement to hold.
“The future of the Eel and Russian rivers should be decided by the people who live along them and depend on them, not brokered in Washington between political appointees and outside interests,” said Charlie Schneider, connectivity program manager for California Trout, a Two-Basin Solution partner.
Secretary Rollins had not reached out to the tribe as of Wednesday, Parker said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said federal filings put the replacement facility’s projected capacity at about 7,900 acre-feet a year. That figure is the share allocated to the Potter Valley Irrigation District under existing conditions, not the new facility’s total projected diversion. Sonoma Water, which would operate the New Eel-Russian Facility, projects average diversions of roughly 30,000 acre-feet a year, with more possible if additional storage is built.
Aha!
So Supervisors Cline and Norvell went to Southern California to the farm bureau meeting in order to sell Potter Valley farmers up the river! Great job you two! Screw the tribes with a public snub and then lead Potter Valley to believe that Daddy Trump might help them while opening the door to a rapacious Republican run water district from far away who sees only dollar signs! Good Job Madeline Cline ! A bold political strategy for your big future! A great move by local girl Keely Covello who has Elsinore’s Burke on her right wing podcast and asks zero pertinent questions at all! She should get the two genius superstar supervisors along with Elsinore and Brooke Rollins on the record and get them to talk about how this idea will help anybody in Mendocino County at all. Bernie says he only went down south to buy lunch anyway so maybe he can defend his decision before his panicked constituents surround his paint store with pitchforks. Madeline can hide behind her hairy husband to draw fire as she goes shopping in the neighborhood. Great job gang!
Nailed it!
Curse on Cline that rat. Now all the farmers who voted for her will fold and blow away. Not seeing any of these farmers paying the new price of water they have been using since the dam was created.
This is all smoke and mirrors. The Trump admin is trying to steal Northern California water and send it to Riverside County, a republican stronghold. The farmers are going to be left high and dry just like the rest of us so Trump cronies can make a buck. We should recall Cline and Norvell and Cloverdale mayor Todd Lands for being such bootlickers and falling for this bullshit.
I don’t know about everyone else but I’m pretty sick of our water and Mendocino County going to some other part of the state that ends up stealing it and leaves us with very little to work with. This is been going on for at least the last 50 years. PG&E has always been crooked and we had problems with them back in the ’60s. This is why you kiah has their own electric grid now because they got away from PG&E. PG&E cannot be trusted and neither can our governor’s office. I believe that the tribes do need to be amongst those in the talks and I don’t understand why that woman would not want to bring a tribal counsel in with her for the negotiations. Doesn’t everyone wonder what they’re trying to hide? Pretty sick and tired of other places telling our counties where are water is going to. 4th
Ironic if the Potter farmers have to buy water at higher rates than they would have if someone hadn’t brought the federal government in on this. The tribes are right to be outraged. And now the farmers should be too.
Yes. Take down your Save Lake Pilsbury signs. That’s a red herring. Pardon the bad fish pun. Support the “2 basin solution” which will double water saving capacity and clean the now muddy outflow from the current dam. Do the research—this will be a good deal for Northern California.
Once it was brought to trumps attention he and his gang of thieves smelled money to be made. PG&E did what they do best create a mess then walk away from it!
I hope farmers wise up and stop voting republican
Either way this is about selling the water back to those who have been using it. Now it’s about who gets the money.
Nobody has questioned the the tribes water right claim, but they should. Unlike the tribes along the Klamath River, Round Valley does not have quantified federal reserved water rights. They do have a reserved right to water sufficient to fulfill the purpose of their reservations from the date the reservation was established. It does not allow them to control the future of the Eel River. This issue is to complex to convey in a comments section. Don’t let yourself believe everything you read, do your own research. You might just find the powers behind the two basin solution don’t have your best interests in mind.
And you might just find that they DO! Certainly, everything trump touches DIES.
Who should control the future of the Eel River?
John who questions Round Valley federal water rights:
Please cite your sources. What does “quantified” mean in your claim that the RVITs do not have “quantified” reserved water rights? How would a constantly-changing river and its tributaries, with their highly variable and climate-dependent discharge volumes and course flow patterns, be quantified, and who would quantify them? Since you challenge us readers to question the complex details of this issue, then help us out.
For my part, this is what I have found, excerpted from “Eel River Water Rights Water Rights and Technical Forum” by Russian River Water Forum, 2023:
*Tribes’ water rights are not geographically limited to those streams that traverse or border the tribes’ reservations, but rather apply to all basin water sources that flow into the portions of a river on which the tribe relies.
*The [Round Valley] Tribes have unadjudicated federal reserved water and fishing rights in the Eel River derived from the creation of their Reservation in 1858, as enlarged in 1873.
Brief history of the Tribes’ Reservation:
* Creation of the RVIT Reservation by the federal government in 1858 and its enlargement in 1873 vested the Tribes with an implied, federally reserved water right sufficient to meet the purposes of the Reservation.
*The primary purpose of the Reservation was to create a homeland for the Tribes based on their fishing way of life and economy.
You say the Round Valley tribe, which is really an amalgam of many tribes, has a reserved right to water that “does not allow them to control the future of the Eel River.” Who then possesses those rights, which include the huge cost and liability for either restoring and maintaining the dams, or the same liability for whatever happens to the water when they are removed? Rights entail responsibility. Our current president and his lackeys have yet to take any responsibility for a single one of his administration’s expensive, destructive and long-lasting actions. It’s time for change.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if everyone was required to cite their sources in the comment section. Unfortunately, I don’t have a single source, or even few to cite from, there are many sources. You can go to ppic.org and do a search for “water rights.” It’s the most recent information that I know of and has a good description of whats involved in Mandating. I’m not disputing the existence of their water rights, just the type. It’s my understanding that they would need to go through that process and have the settlement approved by Congress before they could store or sell water to a third party. It’s the very reason your source used the word “adjudicated”, because it has not been settled yet. At this time there are less than a dozen tribes that have mandated rights. I think Klamath / Hoopa is the only one in Northern California.
And just to be clear, I don’t believe I referred to the Round Valley tribes in singular
terms, but I could have been more clear. I’m no fan of trump either, I have a low regard for politicians in general.
I do find that last comment from your source to be blatant white washing. “*The primary purpose of the Reservation was to create a homeland for the Tribes based on their fishing way of life and economy.” I imagine most of the many tribes forced to the Covelo valley felt they were losing a homeland, not gaining one.
It’s not just the elected heads pushing this. Lake County, Potter Valley, and the AG community have enough enablers (and sycophants) to invite someone like Trump into this… Let them eat each other.
https://mendovoice.com/2025/03/letter-to-the-editor-removing-scott-dam-will-harm-salmon-not-save-them/
https://mendovoice.com/2025/04/letter-to-the-editor-stop-pge-from-decommissioning-scott-dam/
https://www.facebook.com/lakecountycagov/posts/decommissioning-scott-dam-would-be-the-largest-single-dam-removal-in-californias/1372356304920833/
I can’t help thinking how the possibility of destroying the painstakingly negotiated two-basin agreement seems eerily similar to Trump tearing up the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. Look how that worked out. Shouldn’t our supervisors who have had some involvement in this crazy plan with Elsinore hold a press conference and reveal what they know or at least come clean about their involvement?
Thank you, John. I did see the Tribal Water Rights in CA article on the ppic website and will read it when I have more time. You seem much better informed about this issue than most commenters here. Hope you continue to add to these comments again.
The round valley tribe is only interested in getting rich.. The two basin solutions has an agreement where the round valley tribe gets paid for every acre foot of water diverted to the Russian River. Also the round valley tribe does NOT have ancestral rights to that water. Even though this is sad and and wrong they are from butte county originally they were relocated there from the trail of tears the “none cult march”. This article is disgustingly and irresponsibly written. It’s a shame and an unknown with this so cal district but it’s most likely better than losing lake pillsbury all together. Our local Jared Huffman and posse are to blame for all this with thier idiotic self righteous ideas about removing this precious resource that three counties have grown over the last 100 years to rely on
This is important news, but Roger Coryell’s pliable relation with facts and desire for clickbait style articles to prove his worth to the MendoVoice makes it hard for me to trust his reporting, and thus the reporting of this entire publication.
Sure Paul. I think there’s a baby in that bath water you’re dumping in the river.