It now looks like two iconic North Coast rivers will flow dam free by the end of the decade.
Just weeks after the first of four dams was removed from the Klamath River as a part of what will be the largest dam removal effort in the nation’s history, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. filed a 94-page surrender application to federal regulators, formalizing its plan to tear down its two dams on the Eel River that have blocked fish passage and reduced flows for more than a century.
In the filing, PG&E said deconstruction work could begin on the dams as early as 2028, pending environmental review and regulatory approval.
News of the filing was immediately celebrated by environmental and fishing groups.
“Dam removal will make the Eel the longest free-flowing river in California and will open up hundreds of miles of prime habitat unavailable to native salmon and steelhead for over 100 years,” Trout Unlimited California Director Brian Johnson said in a news release. “This is the most important thing we can do for our salmon and steelhead on the Eel River, and these fisheries cannot afford to wait.”
While years of drought and dwindling salmon and steelhead populations have shifted much of the focus to PG&E’s Eel River dams to water, the Potter Valley project was built to provide electricity. In 1900, the Eel River Power and Irrigation Co. began construction on Cape Horn Dam on the Eel River about 4 miles north of the town of Potter Valley, creating the Van Arsdale Reservoir, as well as a 1-mile tunnel that sent Eel River water downhill through a powerhouse before releasing it to the East Fork Russian River, where it was pulled to irrigate vineyards, among other uses. But natural flows in the Eel River only allowed the project to operate in winter months, so the power company began construction in 1920 of a second, larger dam about 12 miles upriver from Cape Horn. Scott Dam, which formed Lake Pillsbury, created enough water storage capacity to control flows leading to Cape Horn, allowing the Potter Valley project to create electricity year-round.
Increasingly over recent decades, however, the project has become unviable. Endangered species protections have obligated PG&E to keep more water in the Eel River and, as diversions have decreased, so has the electricity generated. Meanwhile, upkeep and compliance costs have increased significantly, and seismic concerns surrounding Scott Dam and associated liability risks have prompted PG&E to stop filling the reservoir behind Scott Dam to capacity.
So a century after its construction, PG&E began looking to sell off the Potter Valley project to the highest bidder. After receiving no interest, the company looked to simply give it away in 2019, which launched the so-called Two Basin Partnership, a divergent group of stakeholders comprised of Sonoma County water users, Eel River environmental groups, commercial fishing organizations and others, spearheaded by North Coast Congressmember Jared Huffman. The idea would be to remove the dams but to replace them with water diversion infrastructure that would pump limited water from the Eel to Lake Mendocino when flows are high to prevent the Russian River from going dry in the summer months. But the effort has stalled largely due to the cost of the undertaking, as the environmental studies required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission alone are costly and the mechanics of figuring out who would fund dam removal, as well as the construction and operation of the new infrastructure needed to continue water diversions from the Eel.
The plan put forward by PG&E last week doesn’t close the door on the Two Basin Solution but instead makes clear the utility is not waiting for it to materialize, and is instead moving forward with dam removal.
In a statement released after the plan’s release, Huffman struck an optimistic tone as to what it would mean for his constituents in both basins.
“PG&E’s draft surrender application is a major step forward to achieving the Two Basin Solution I’ve advocated for years,” he said. “The plan includes full and expedited removal of two dams that harm salmon on the Eel River while allowing for a modern fish-friendly diversion to provide water to Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties. I’ll be working to ensure that both elements are completed in a way that best protects communities, tribes and natural resources in the Eel and Russian River watersheds.”
Craig Tucker, a consultant on the project for the county of Humboldt, said there is certainly a contingent in the environmental community inclined to say “to hell” with the Two Basin Solution, that “we’re going to remove all this stuff and keep all the water.” Tucker said he wouldn’t go that far, but noted the complexity of coming up with a viable plan to meet both basin’s needs. Plus, he said he’s learned some things after decades of working for the removal of four dams on the lower Klamath River.
“If I’ve learned anything from the Klamath, it’s keep it simple,” Tucker said, adding that pushing forward as fast as possible for dam removal now wouldn’t preclude a future project to help meet water demand in Sonoma County. “We feel like the fish need an immediate, full-scale restoration project if there are going to be any left.”
Others who prize or depend on the Eel River feel similarly.
“These dams helped put a lot of commercial fishermen out of work,” said Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Watershed Conservation Director Vivian Helliwell in a news release. “If we bring back the salmon, we can bring back the local food-producing jobs.”
But moving forward with dam removal unquestionably is a hard reality to some. In addition to the uncertainty it creates for water users in Sonoma and Mendocino counties, undamming the Eel invariably means the loss of Lake Pillsbury, the 3.5- square-mile reservoir formed by Scott Dam. The lake is a popular recreation destination, with numerous campgrounds on its banks, as well as approximately 300 homes and cabins built in the immediate vicinity. Lake County Treasurer and Tax Collector Patrick Sullivan said in a video presentation on the subject last month that dam removal would result in annual losses of $750,000 in tax revenue for the county, as well as an immediate $40 million loss in property values. Lake County supervisors have pledged to work toward securing “monetary considerations” for affected property owners.
But on the North Coast and the lower Eel River, once one of the most prolific salmon producing rivers in the region, news that PG&E plans to move directly forward with dam removal, with construction efforts to remove Scotts Dam beginning as soon as 2028, was welcome.
“While we will listen to any creative solutions to meet the region’s water needs, we will oppose anything that adversely impacts Eel River fisheries or delays dam removal,” said Friends of the Eel River Executive Director Alicia Hamann in the release. “Either way you look at it, the Eel River dams’ days are numbered. We prefer the most straightforward and quickest path to dam removal possible — the fish can’t afford any delays.”
Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the news editor at the Journal. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, extension 321, or thad@northcoastjournal.com.
This article appears in 2023 Holiday Gift Guide.
What a joke all these people hiding behind the “every minute counts for these fish”. There are absolutely zero facts to support even one single salmon benefiting from the additional 2 miles of the eel river that would become available once Scott Dam is removed. 100 years of evolution and degradation of the entire Eel is why the fish numbers are down. There is NO proof this will help even one fish much less bring in numbers of fish that will “bring back local food producing jobs”. What a joke. The only jobs coming from the eel are from the growers who are stealing the water for their illegal crops. So tired of these people claiming they can predict the future. I just wish interviewers would require the people being quoted to produce facts to support their outlandish claims of future fish populations.
Bottom line to me, CA has been had water shortages for decades and those will only get worse. We need all the water storage we can get for humans and this tear down all dams story is getting very old. ZERO proof that there will be any measurable improvement in fish populations for hundreds of millions of dollars from you and I and no chance to ever restore the existing water storage facility once it is taken down and the fish do not appear. In my opinion all these folks care about is taking down all dams at all costs.
Do some simple math. Let’s say that somehow doing this would result in maybe 1000 more fish in the eel river system so these politicians can go fly fishing for them. Then let’s say this costs from $750,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 to properly do this and pay all the legal costs as well. Well, I’m no math wiz but to me that is about $7,500,000 per fish. And to be clear if you look at records showing the numbers of fish currently reaching the Van Arsdale dam you will know that 1000 new fish would be a very very optimistic number. Oh wait, using that math and real numbers would create actual facts to make the decisions look absurd. Yup, no reason to use actual facts in the decision making process to eliminate another one of California’s very important water storage facilities. Let’t just tear them all down. Wake up. How about the save the billion dollars and figure out how to keep the water storge.
FANTASTIC!!!! What we as a species have done to this planet is despicable. A concerted effort should be made to repair the damage we have done. The Eel river canyon is a very very special place returning its health is a wonderful move. Now if we could find someone to cleanup all the railroad trash, wreckage & debris left along the old RR route should be a priority. A superfund project maybe? REMEMBER, whatever we do to this planet we are doing to ourselves.
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Obviously DAVEL doesn’t value salmonids or a healthy ecosystem. Lake Pillsberry is filling up with sediment, and the two dams block passage to migratory salmon. Your numbers don’t tell the story. It’s common sense that if you remove the dams, the salmon can migrate up and utilize historic spawning habitat. Use groundwater or build new reservoirs and tributary streams that don’t impact salmon migration as much. The dam should’ve never been built in the first place, but no one knew better about how it would affect salmon.
Well Chuck, unfortunately the world doesn’t work that way. Your proposed solution still costs the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. And that still would not guarantee to bring one more fish back to the river or ocean. The very small spawning habitat to which you refer (2% of the river) is not worth hundreds of millions of dollars to reach. If people really care about the fish, put your money where your mouth is and fund a project to restore the existing 98% of the river where there is enough viable spawning ground for 1,000,000 times the existing population. Then the tax payers and rate payers will not have to pay the billion dollars to remove a perfectly good water storage facility and then pay for alternative ways to provide that water to the communities that need it. So if you care about the salmonoids and healthy ecosystem as you say lets hear where you fund the solution.
We have heard from a lot of proponents for tearing down the dam and to my knowledge not a single one of them have offered to fund that effort, let alone the replacement of the water that they will be creating. Pretty easy to be a crusader for one little pretend fishy when it’s not your money or your water or your land!
Folks should think about the salmon runs before the damn was built. And what price the habitat on and in the river after the damn was built. Just watch and see the runs of salmond that will flourish.pluss the lake is just filling with poison and slowly becoming like clearlake..one big septic tank..