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ALICIA HAMANN:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Alicia Hamann with Friends of the Eel River, and I'm joined by my colleague and friend, Scott Greacen, also with Friends of the Eel River. Hey, Scott.

SCOTT GREACEN:

Hey, Alicia.

HAMANN:

Well, today we're going to be talking about, surprise, surprise, the Eel River dams. There have been some new developments, and we're really excited about the way that the decommissioning process is proceeding. But we want to talk about how FERC is holding things up. But I suppose I should start with a little bit of background on the project.

So the Eel River Dams are known as the Potter Valley Project. It's a project that's owned by Pacific Gas and Electric. And it consists of two dams in the upper basin of the main stem Eel River and a diversion tunnel that sends water from the Eel River into the Russian River. This used to be a hydroelectric project, but as of the summer of 2021, it has stopped generating electricity altogether. So now what it really is, is just a fish passage barrier.

GREACEN:

As a hydroelectric project, the Pottery Valley Project had to be licensed with and by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. So that's the federal agency that's really at the center of what happens with the project going forward.

HAMANN:

That's right. And FERC issues hydropower licenses on typically on a 50-year basis. And so the reason that there's movement right now for these dams to be removed, aside from the fact that they're unsafe and uneconomical and violating environmental laws, is also just that the license expired and PG&E was smart enough to realize that this isn't a project worth keeping. So, Scott, I want to start off by asking you about the developments that we saw on the dam safety front this past spring. We heard a pretty surprising announcement from PG&E and it really altered the way that they operate the project. Can you tell me more about that?

GREACEN:

Yeah. It was surprising to the vast majority of people who aren't aware that Scott Dam and its Lake Pillsbury Reservoir are actually situated atop the Bartlett Springs Fault, an offshoot of the Hayward Fault that appears, according to USGS researchers, capable of generating earthquakes greater than magnitude 7. So it's no small fault and there's no small seismic risk. But what PG&E announced in March of this year was that it had received an initial study of the seismic risks at Scott Dam and concluded within the space of a couple of days, which is lightning pace for PG&E, that those risks were too great and accordingly that it would lower the radial gates that had been built atop Scott Dam to add storage to the reservoir to make up for the storage that had been lost to sedimentation over the years.

So lowering those gates permanently means the dam will now hold about 20,000 acre feet less water and with that much less weight pressed against the dam, the seismic risks would be considerably reduced. So PG&E said basically, we're not going to raise the gates anymore. FERC said, wait, what? And then the state of California weighed in and said, yeah, you're not going to raise the gates anymore and actually you're ordered not to raise the gates anymore ever again until we tell you that you can.

HAMANN:

So, in addition to Scott Dam being located basically right on top of the Bartlett Springs fault line, are there other concerns related to the safety of the structure that the California Division of Dam Safety might be looking into?

GREACEN:

There are almost too many to list, but they start with the basic construction of the dam, which in 1921 was intended. This is Scott Dam we're talking about, the upper of the two dams. It was intended to go straight across the Eel River.

And in the middle of construction, the high water of 1921 flushed up against the southern bank of the Eel and knocked loose what the builders had thought was a piece of bedrock outcrop. Turned out to be a giant boulder which fell downhill into the path of the dam. So they could either try to remove it or do what they chose to do, which is redesign the dam with a bend in it to go in front of that boulder, which remains in place. So the boulder itself, the sediments that's been added since in the century that the dam's been operated, are now real safety risks for a dam that was never built quite the way it was designed.

On top of that, we've got a landscape full of ancient landslides, including one that's right above that southern abutment of Scott Dam. And we know from a study that Friends of the Eel commissioned with Miller Pacific Engineering that either a significant earthquake or a significant rainstorm or both could release those landslides. We saw that happen across Japan with an earthquake. And the high sixes, early low sevens happened about five years ago, as I remember it. There were landslides all over that part of Japan where the earthquake hit.

HAMANN:

And speaking of the international perspective on dam safety, we've seen just recently some really serious implications of what happens when dams fail. Do you want to talk a little bit about what we saw in Libya?

GREACEN:

Yeah, there is a real tragedy in the Libyan port city of Derna. A couple of dams were built upstream from Derna in the 1970s to allow development on the floodplains along the river there. And unfortunately, since the collapse of the Libyan government, especially over the last decade, those dams have not been maintained well. And on top of that, a very serious, very intense storm, Storm Daniel, hit the area with more water than the dam builders had ever anticipated when they designed and built the dam. The result was that both dams collapsed, washed down into the city of Derna and washed away entire neighborhoods, costing tens of thousands of lives. Many people will never be recovered. And it's just an almost unimaginable devastation, but it's a really important reminder of the power that we hold back behind the dams we build and the importance of staying on top of dam safety issues, which California in particular and the U.S. in general pride ourselves on being on top of dam safety issues.

But my experience looking at the Potter Valley Project and FERC's assessment of dam safety issues over the last decade has taught me that FERC is running a shell game and has no real idea what's going on with the deeper risks to its dams. It's basically an agency that is determined to present an image of itself as competent and therefore determined to present an image of the dams it licenses as safe. And it insists that, for example, when PG&E was going to relicense the project, that the question of dam safety, questions around dam safety and the dam's construction, the fault, all these things, were not relevant to the question of relicensing. That, FERC says, is a completely different matter that its Division of Dam Safety and Inspections deals with, and they make sure that all the dams are always safe. Now we know that's not true, and this variance approval tells us it's not true, because FERC is scrambling now to understand what the seismic risks are at Scott Dam.

HAMANN:

Yeah, that's both deeply concerning and I would say really insulting for the people who live downstream from these dams. I'll remind folks, as I always do, that Scott Dam is rated as a high hazard facility, which means that in the event of dam failure, loss of life is likely. And to not have clear planning that's available to the public and a really transparent assessment of the things that could cause the dam to fail, should be.

GREACEN:

And that's the particularly frustrating thing about FERC and PG&E's dam safety efforts prior to this point, is that the vast majority of the information about dam safety issues at Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam on the eel is classified as critical energy infrastructure information, or CEII, a category that was created under the Patriot Act after 9-1-1 in 2001. And the classification of all of this material about the maintenance of the dam, its various structures, we have yet to even touch on the needle valve that's the only outlet from Scott Dam, are all classified as secret because terrorists might look at it and discern some way to attack Scott Dam and our critical energy generating infrastructure that produces no electricity again. It's really maddening. And there's a way for the public to get that information, which is to promise that you won't share it with anybody else to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which means if we went and looked at it, we couldn't tell you about it, which is kind of the whole point.

HAMANN:

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's skip ahead a little bit in the timeline to May, when PG&E asked FERC for a variance. And for folks who are not regular listeners, PG&E just about every year for the last decade has asked FERC for a variance, which is basically permission to alter from the normally scheduled flows that it releases from the project, both into the Eel River and into the Russian River. Scott, why do they keep asking for these variances? And has anything changed in the last couple of years about the nature of what they're asking for?

GREACEN:

Yeah, they keep asking for variances because there's not enough water in the eel to meet all of the required flows. So that's the big picture is that flows in the eel have reflected the broader shift with rising temperatures and changing patterns of precipitation, the long drought we've endured. And that's really meant that PG&E has had to go back to FERC repeatedly and say, we need the rules lifted on this front or that front, mostly to ensure that there's a little water left in the eel and it's not all diverted to the Russian.

What's really changed in the last few years is, as you noted, Alicia, that the license, the operating license for the Potter Valley project expired last year and will not be renewed. PG&E can't renew it. Nobody else has qualified to renew it. The project license will now be surrendered. And the question is what and when PG&E will have to do to decommission and remove the dams prior to license surrender. What's really changed now is that with the expiration of that license, the National Marine Fisheries Service has told FERC and PG&E that continued operation of the Eel River dams not only risks harm to and even extinction of listed steelhead and Chinook in the Eel, it also comes without any legal coverage under the Endangered Species Act because, NMF says, the incidental take coverage the agency did provide in 2000 only ran through the end of that annual license.

Accordingly, NMF has said, PG&E and FERC, you need to implement a series of interim protective measures, these eight measures that will help keep salmon and steelhead alive in the eel until the dams are removed.

HAMANN:

So in light of this heightened awareness of the way that both the company, PG&E, and the agency, FERC, are violating the Endangered Species Act, last year, PG&E made a really good effort to ensure that water temperatures released from Scott Dam into the Eel River were appropriate to protect the juvenile steelhead hanging out there during the summer and early fall. Were they successful in doing that this year?

GREACEN:

Unfortunately not, and that cold water from the Lake Pillsbury Reservoir is really the centerpiece of those interim protective measures. NMPSA said you need to hold on to about 30,000 acre-feet in Lake Pillsbury through the end of the summer so that the water at the bottom of the reservoir stays cold enough that it can be a source for cool water to mitigate the high water temperatures that juvenile steelhead experience in that reach between the dams.

And what's important to note here is that the those steelhead, if it weren't for Scott Dam blocking them, would be running upriver into cooler reaches of the eel. So what we are doing is mitigating, we're attempting to mitigate the impacts of Scott Dam and its entire lack of fish passage on those critically impaired steelhead.

HAMANN:

This the Ecoews Report. We're talking with Scott Greacen from Friends of the Eel River about the Eel River dams and why it's really great that they're coming out soon.

GREACEN:

We have 150 some individuals returned to the Upper Eel last year, maybe 70 reds, maybe 7,000 juveniles there.

HAMANN:

Yeah, that's right. So if the dam weren't there, the fish wouldn't be hanging out in this relatively crappy part of the river, they'd be going up to the wonderful habitat that they're unable to access right now.

GREACEN:

That's right, and they would be running away from the introduced non-native and possiverous pike minnow that.

HAMANN:

... that being a fish ...

GREACEN:

a fish that eats fish. So those predatory pikeminnow wreak total havoc on juvenile steelhead, especially as water temperatures rise below about 18 degrees centigrade. Juvenile steelhead do really well. But as the water temperature goes up to 19, 20, 21 degrees, they don't do so well, and then they die. Pike minnow have exactly the opposite response to water temperatures. Cold water is not so great for them, but they get increasingly happy with warmer water. So as that water warms in the inter-dam reach, the juvenile steelhead struggling to grow up in there become increasingly subject to predation from pike minnow. So that's why the cold water matters so much.

Having said that, PG&E asked for this variance on May 23. FERC granted it yesterday, October 2. By the time you hear this, it will be a week ago. But the point is, it took FERC four months to approve a pretty pro forma variance that repeated many elements of the previous variances. There is no reason for this. And it cost us production of juvenile steelhead this year. By mid-August, the water temperatures, not just in the river, but coming out of the bottom of Scott Dam, were lethal to steelhead. They were at 20 and 21 degrees centigrade. It was horrible.

HAMANN:

So I know federal agencies can often be ridiculously slow and clunky, but even for an agency like FERC, this seems pretty ridiculous. Do you have any thoughts about why they spent the entire summer making this decision? A decision that I should add seems very obvious to everyone involved. And if I recall, the variance was even supported broadly by stakeholders in both basins.

GREACEN:

Let's note that the Mendocino agricultural interests and Sonoma Water argued against the variants in many respects. So it's really worth noting that by its delay, FERC has essentially given the Mendocino County Agricultural Interests exactly what they wanted, which is to deny the variants constructively and give them all the water that flowed down the Russian River this year instead of staying in Lake Pillsbury and staying cool. So my best guess here is, well, I have two guesses here.

One is that FERC staff keeps jumping around on this project, because if you read this FERC order for details, you will see that the person writing it doesn't know anything about the Eel River and its fish species. FERC writes that spring-run Chinook are in the Eel River. That is not true. It has not, unfortunately, been true for more than a century. They note incorrectly that juvenile Chinook and steelhead are present in the Eel in the summer. That is not correct. Chinook run downriver in their first spring. It's really the steelhead that are at risk here.

So it's very disappointing to see that level of incompetence reflected in such an important document. The other thing, though, is this question of dam safety. And I think, as I noted at the outset, FERC is really maintaining a facade of competence about dam safety. And I think the agency was caught at best flat-footed with the PG&E's announcement about the radial gates and seismic risks, even though we have told FERC repeatedly about the government's own studies of Bartlett Springs Fault and its capacity for very large earthquakes. FERC doesn't seem to be taking these questions seriously and doesn't seem to be incorporating all of this information about dam safety in the way that you would expect an agency that has real expertise on these issues to do, much less one that combines real expertise in maintaining hydroelectric facilities and assessing their impact on critical biological resources. FERC doesn't seem to know what it's doing, frankly.

HAMANN:

Well, so what happened this summer was really a tragedy for the Eel River. I would say that it amounts to a fish kill. We're not going to see the kinds of evidence that people would expect to see from a fish kill because all those juvenile steelhead probably ended up in the bellies of pike minnow. But I do want to, in our last few minutes here, talk about what comes next. I think the good news broadly is that the Eel River won't be reliant on FERC to ensure that its fisheries can survive in our future because the dams are coming down.

GREACEN:

And FERC has also received a request for a long-term variance from PG&E, which will again repeat all of these interim protective measures on the 30,000-acre foot pool. And so hopefully this time, FERC can finally just approve the dang thing, since they considered all the issues at hand.

HAMANN:

Would you expect to see that long-term variance approved before we get to the same situation next summer?

GREACEN:

It better be, but as you know better than anyone, it is very hard for us to hold FERC to account under the Endangered Species Act. We are in court with the agency right now, but they have told us basically, if you don't press pause on this lawsuit, we can't amend the annual license. We can't put into effect the rules NMFS has requested and that we know are necessary. And so we have to hold off until they finish amending the license, which really needs to go away along with the dams. It's really maddening.

HAMANN:

Well, and fortunately, PG&E has made it quite clear to all stakeholders that their intent in their initial draft decommissioning plan this fall is to propose removal of all facilities. I think the way they phrased it was that they're going to remove all in-water facilities.

GREACEN:

Which would lead to the diversion tunnel. It's worth noting. So folks who want to go ahead and build a diversion, they can do that.

HAMANN:

Right, right. So what we're expecting to see from PG&E is an initial plan this fall, probably sometime in November. And what's important, I think, for people to hear now and be prepared for is that this proposal is likely to include multiple options, some of which are guaranteed to delay dam removal. And so we're really, you're going to be hearing from us again in a month or so, asking you all to write comments to PG&E to make sure that they understand how important it is that they stick to their own plan to remove the Eel River dams as soon as possible. What else are we going to see in the near future? Or I guess what else do you want to say about what we expect in the proposal this fall?

GREACEN:

I just want to reiterate the importance of what we are also going to see in PG&E's proposal is an option that has been proposed by Sonoma Water and the Russian River Agricultural Interests to essentially delay dam removal pending design, financing, construction, and approval, and construction, rather, of a new diversion works. And that is the worst-case scenario for us at this point, that the project that, as we've discussed here, is not only dangerously unsafe, but is completely uneconomic and very dangerous for Yale River fisheries, would remain in place for 5, 10, 15 years. We don't know. The Oroville dam relicensing is still going on 15 years later, while Sonoma Water and company figure out how to pay for their new diversion works. And that's not fair. That's not right.

But Sonoma Water and Sonoma County have a great deal of political power and a great deal of money. And it's very important for people to understand that PG&E is paying attention to its bottom line in choosing to take these dams out. It is making no money from electric generation, paying a lot of money to maintain this set of assets, and now it understands that it has a potentially enormous set of liabilities on its hands. It's no wonder the company wants to get rid of the dams.

HAMANN:

Yeah, definitely. Well, and I think that we can only expect that if Sonoma's plan is is the one that ultimately PG&E runs with it, it's quite clear that that plan is going to cause delay to dam removal. It's practically built into the plan. But I also just want to note that we've all been working on this broadly decommissioning process for a long time now, since 2017, when Congressman Huffman's ad hoc committee was first formed, we have we have been meeting and trying to work out the very solution that that Sonoma water is still trying to work out now. And very little progress has been made in those six years. So I, I don't think we can expect that rapid progress is suddenly going to be made. I think that the status quo of getting nearly free water is something that any water user is going to try to extend as long as possible.

GREACEN:

Right. What they don't understand is that the combination of lowering those radial gates and holding on to a cold pool through the end of the dry season in every year from now on is going to sharply reduce the amount of water that's available, especially in drier years. So not only is the project not generating any power, it's really going to generate a sharply reduced amount of water for the Russian river going forward. So the benefits of delay to the Russian, I think, are really misunderstood. And that's a part of the picture that that side of our artificially conjoined watersheds has yet to appreciate. The past is done and the status quo is over. We're in a new era now. Yeah.

HAMANN:

Well folks, like I said, stay tuned, we're going to be calling on you pretty soon to help us really drive home the point to PG&E that we think they're doing the right thing and that we want them to stay the course on Eel River dam removal. As always, you can find more information at eelriver.org and you'll be hearing from us again soon.

I've got one exciting announcement to share. Friends of the Eel River, along with Humboldt Trails Council and KEET-TV, are hosting a Great Redwood Trail community event on Saturday, October 14th. The event will be at the Dyerville Overlook, that's the big grassy area and parking lot just north of Founders Grove, off exit 663 from Highway 101. We'll have about 15 organizations tabling with lots of family-friendly activities, presentations by representatives from Senator McGuire's office, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, the Great Redwood Trail Agency and more, food from Little Bits Food Truck, free face painting and lots of other activities. We are still seeking volunteers, the backbone of any event, so if you'd like to volunteer, please reach out to us at foer@eelriver.org or look for more information on our website eelriver.org.

Thanks! This has been another issue of the Econews Report. Join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.