MENDOCINO CO., 7/24/ 26 — The public gets nearly two more months to weigh in on the plan to pull two dams out of the Eel River. Federal regulators moved the deadline Friday, the day the old one was set to run out.
Comments came in all day. At least 212 landed Friday, July 24 — more than on any other day of the review.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission explained itself in one sentence. “Staff have considered the comments and have decided to extend the comment period for scoping to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on September 18, 2026,” wrote Secretary Debbie-Anne A. Reese. That was all it said.
The old cutoff was 5 p.m. Eastern — 2 p.m. in Ukiah — on Friday July 24.
The extension buys opponents and supporters of dam removal eight more weeks to tell the commission what its environmental review should consider. That review will shape the terms under which Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is allowed to walk away from the Potter Valley Project, the century-old hydroelectric system that moves Eel River water into the Russian River watershed and on to farms and cities downstream.
PG&E filed its application to surrender the license and decommission the project on July 25, 2025. The plan calls for removing Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury, and Cape Horn Dam about 12 miles downstream, which impounds Van Arsdale Reservoir. At Van Arsdale, up to 75 cubic feet per second is currently diverted through a series of tunnels and penstocks to the Potter Valley powerhouse and released into the East Branch of the Russian River. The project sits in Lake and Mendocino counties and occupies federal land managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
Commission staff opened the scoping process on May 22 and held two public meetings in Ukiah on June 23 and 24, where roughly 70 people spoke across two nights.
A review of the commission’s electronic docket found at least 173 separate filings entered on Friday, the great majority of them from individuals writing without an affiliation, and more than 560 since June 1. The pace built through the week, with dozens more arriving on each of the three preceding days.
Among the organizations filing on the final day were the Sonoma County Water Agency, Sonoma and Humboldt counties, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, the Eel-Russian Project Authority, the Potter Valley Tribe, the Wiyot Tribe, California Trout, Trout Unlimited, Friends of the Eel River, Friends of the River, Save California Salmon, CalWild, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the Crab Boat Owners’ Association.
The State Water Resources Control Board weighed in as well, in a letter dated July 23 that reached the docket the following day. The board used it to point out a limit on the commission’s authority. Under Section 401 of the federal Clean Water Act, it wrote, the commission “may not issue a surrender order until the Board acts on the certification,” except where the state waives that power. The same letter notes that PG&E hasn’t generated power at the Potter Valley powerhouse since July 2021, because a transformer didn’t meet operating standards.
A Southern California district’s late bid to join the case
The docket also carries an unresolved fight over who gets to participate at all. The Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District asked on July 9 to become an official party in the federal review of PG&E’s plan to remove the dams. The deadline to ask had already passed. The district in Southern California serves more than 49,000 water, sewer and farm hookups around Lake Elsinore.
Four sets of objections followed. The Round Valley Indian Tribes filed first, on July 17. Filings from Friends of the River and the Wiyot Tribe, along with a joint filing from Friends of the Eel River, California Trout and Trout Unlimited, all landed Friday.
The conservation groups’ central complaint is not that the district was late. It is what the district left out.
“EVMWD has failed to disclose its efforts — reported in the media for the past several months and touted in its own press releases — to explore potential acquisition of the Potter Valley Project,” the three groups wrote. They argued the omission alone should sink the motion, because the disclosure requirement “applies to all interventions, timely or not.”
The Wiyot Tribe’s objection is narrower. The district never showed how the outcome would actually affect it, the tribe wrote — all it offered were “general statements about its responsibility as a municipal water district in California.” The Wiyot reservation sits near the mouth of the Eel River, well downstream of both dams.
On July 22, the Southern California district filed its own substantive comments on the decommissioning plan. As of Friday, the docket showed no ruling on the district’s motion, and the notice extending the comment period doesn’t mention it.
Send comments by September 18 to https://ferconline.ferc.gov/QuickComment.aspx.