Scott Dam, with Lake Pillsbury behind it. Photo: PG&E.

It was all kumbaya a couple of weeks ago, as various players in the drama over the Eel River Project stamped their seals of approval on a deal that would tear down both Scott and Van Arsdale Cape Horn dams, while at the same time continuing delivery of Eel River water to the Russian River watershed.

But Lake County — the actual home of Lake Pillsbury, the reservoir created by Scott Dam — now seems ready to throw a wrench into the gears, via a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.

At its meeting tomorrow, the Lake County Board of Supervisors will consider sending two letters — one to Gov. Gavin Newsom and one to various cabinet-level officials in the Trump administration, arguing that removal of the badly broken dams runs contrary to policy.

Backers of the deal to bring the dams down can safely ignore the former, but the appeal to the Trump administration could be a bit more serious. The media-loving, California-hating president has, in the run-up to his election and since, loudly championed his somewhat nonsensical idea that California dams need to stay in place so that water might be sent south to rehydrate parched forests. He has accounted every drop of California water that reaches the ocean as water wasted.

Alicia Hamann, executive director of the Friends of the Eel, was relatively optimistic when reached by the Outpost this afternoon. She pointed to the first Trump administration’s non-interference with removal of the Klamath dams on the grounds that private businesses — in that case, PacifiCorp — had the right to dispose of their property as they see fit.

“I would be pretty surprised if his administration stepped in,” Hamann said. “But then again I have been surprised by a lot of things lately.”

In any case, the Lake County staffers who have put together the appeal to the Trump Administration have clearly studied the president’s habit of mind, and know which buttons to push. Here’s an excerpt:

Decommissioning of the dam would put regional agriculture, fire protection, water availability, and our tourism economy at great risk. Concepts in Executive Orders signed by President Donald J Trump argue for prioritizing such human needs; we believe FERC [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] would be going against those Orders if they approved Decommissioning of Scott Dam without a degree of investment in mitigation measures PG&E is unlikely to engage in unless compelled to by FERC and other regulatory entities.

On January 24, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14181: “Emergency Measures To Provide Water Resources in California and Improve Disaster Response in Certain Areas.” In this Executive Order, President Trump requests that the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce, “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries.” By approving Decommissioning of Scott Dam, FERC would “unduly burden” many communities that rely on Lake Pillsbury, minimizing water deliveries to our farmers and other end users, including water flows in fire hydrants.

As stated earlier: The whole Eel River hydropower system, which is owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric, is badly broken. Leaving aside the closure of the Upper Eel to migrating salmonids, Scott Dam itself was somewhat shoddily built on top of an earthquake fault, and is at the end of its life. The power station at Cape Horn Dam — the only generator in the system — has been offline since 2021, meaning that no power has been produced by the Potter Valley Project in the last four years. PG&E wants to be rid of it.

If it approves this letter, the Lake County Board of Supervisors would be asking the Trump administration to intervene in the federal bureaucratic process that would, otherwise, result in the decommissioning and removal of the two dams. 

Though it’s easy enough to imagine the president making the most of this fresh opportunity to troll the libs, Hamann, for one, thinks that Lake County might want to consider carefully before handing it to him.

“I would really point out to them that they risk missing out on an opportunity to seek compensation for the loss of the recreation opportunity that is the reservoir,” she said.

The Lake County Board of Supervisors meets tomorrow, Feb. 25, at 9 a.m.,  in Lakeport. There may or may not be Zoom participation available; the agenda, which can be found at this link, gives instructions, but warns that if the Zoom goes down they might not bother to fix it.

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