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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC. And joining me are my best friends from Friends the Eel River, Alicia Hamann, Executive Director. Hey, Alicia.

ALICIA HAMANN:

Hey, Tom, you're one of my best friends, too.

WHEELER:

And also joining me is Scott Greacen, Conservation Director at Friends of the Eel River.

So I am so curious what's going on with dam removal these days because I have been tracking the news and it seems like there's a number of things that are happening simultaneously. So I'm so glad to have you on so that I can get up to speed on all the good work on dam removal in the Eel River. So Alicia, maybe though, let's start at the beginning and talk through this process and maybe even before that, like the dams on the Eel River and why they're a problem and why we need them to come out.

HAMANN:

Yeah, let's make sure all our listeners are up to speed with what we're talking about. So starting way up in the headwaters of the Eel River, up in Mendocino National Forest, there are two dams. They are a century old. They're collectively called the Potter Valley Project. Two dams are called Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam. And in addition to the two dams, they provide for a diversion into the Russian River. So water is removed from the Eel, goes through this mile long tunnel through a mountain and is diverted into the Russian River where it used to be used to generate electricity, a teeny tiny, measly amount of electricity.

But it actually hasn't done that for about four years now. Like I said, the project is a century old and like any century old infrastructure, it is falling apart. The way that we describe it is we say that this project has failed in basically every way that it can. The reservoir is filling with sediment. It's becoming less and less of a viable source for water supply.

One important way that the project has failed and has frankly failed from the beginning is by not providing any fish passage to the upper basin. There is a fish ladder at the first dam that fish come to, Cape Horn Dam. But when fish get to the second dam, Scott Dam, they're abruptly stopped and prevented from accessing hundreds of miles of really excellent habitat. The project is also really seismically vulnerable. It sits on a fault line that's capable of producing up to a magnitude seven earthquake. And as soon as that happens, we're gonna see a catastrophic dam failure. There's lots of other problems with the dams, which people can delve into at eelriver.org.

WHEELER:

So we have some old, outdated dams, they're not really doing the thing that they were built to do in the first place, but they still are having very significant impacts on our environment. Seems like these are deadbeat dams that should be destroyed. Let's go into....

SCOTT GREACEN:

They're classic instances of deadbeat dams. This was coined to describe dams whose cost is greater than the benefits they deliver. And the Potter Valley Project was singled out by PG&E as the most expensive hydropower it's got left in its portfolio, basically. They told us at one point that they were managing to make about a dollar in revenue for every $20 they spent on maintenance and operations. So it's just not a cost-effective project for them.

WHEELER:

And so PG&E is also the dam owner and operator and so they have their own reasons to support dam removal for that reason. They have this big liability, it sits on top of a fault, and it's not making them money, it's losing them money, actively losing them money.

GREACEN:

So those are two kinds of financial considerations. Like one is this is costing us money every year. We're paying for something that doesn't deliver. That's a stupid business decision. But California rate payers of course know that PG&E is also sensitive to questions of liability having gone bankrupt twice in the last generation because of catastrophes it caused. So they don't want to do that again.

HAMANN:

In an attempt to mitigate this risk, a couple of years ago, PG&E received an analysis that looked at both the aging infrastructure of the dams combined with the seismic risk. And as soon as they got that analysis, they pretty rapidly announced that they were going to reduce the capacity of the reservoir. There's these gates on top of Scott Dam that increase the capacity by about 20,000 acre feet. And they said, we're never going to raise those again. We're going to make sure that this project is holding even less water so that if some catastrophe occurs, hopefully the outcome will be not quite as bad as it otherwise would if the reservoir were full. Scott Dam is rated as a high hazard facility, which means that if it fails when the reservoir is full, it's likely to cause fatalities downstream.

WHEELER:

Which makes sense, there's a lot of communities built up along the Eel River that would be inundated by this dam water. So, there are other folks, however, that are reliant upon the Potter Valley Project. It does provide water for other parts of the state of California, outside the Eel River Basin. And so, there's always been this difficulty in pursuing dam removal because Sonoma County water users like Eel River water.

HAMANN:

And Tom, that I think leads us to the remarkable part of this part of the story of Eel River Dam removal, which like you said, for a long time there was this classic narrative of fish versus ag, right? We want the river to be healthy for the fish so that fishermen and tribes and people who support biodiversity and people like my kid who just love fish and want to help nature so that we're all appeased. But also, oh no, there's all these agriculturalists who depend on that water in Potter Valley and the communities downstream from them.

But the remarkable part of the story is that those interests have all aligned at this point. Just a few weeks ago, we saw the publication of the Water Diversion Agreement, which is something that stakeholders from both the Eel River and the Russian River have been working on for quite some time now. And it outlines plans for a future diversion that is a dam-free diversion, or some people might call it a run-of-the-river diversion. And it will allow for water to be diverted from the Eel to the Russian following dam removal.

But importantly, it changes the season that those diversions happen. Right now, water is diverted from the Eel when the Eel can least afford to spare that water. But in the future, water will still be diverted from the Eel, but only during the wet season and only a percent of the natural flows that the Eel can afford to spare.

In our mind, Friends of the Eel River, we personally would prefer to see that diversion ended. But we're comfortable supporting this agreement because we feel pretty confident about the safeguards that have been put in place on the flow and the timing of the diversion. But this agreement really importantly, like I said, it brings all those stakeholders together to support dam removal. And something that we want to talk about on this episode, and that you'll hear us talking about a lot in the coming months, is the importance of going into the decommissioning process with a united front and showing the federal agency that oversees this project, and will ultimately oversee the license surrender, that there is broad community support for dam removal in both basins.

WHEELER:

So even though we no longer have active hydroelectric facilities on the Eel River, that they've been shuttered for four years, the dams on the Eel River are still regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. Can you talk about this agency and the role it plays in dam removal? Scott.

GREACEN:

So, as you said, Tom, it's FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, because under federal law, if you have a hydropower installation over a certain capacity, it must have a federal permit to operate. And those permits are issued by FERC. They're generally very long-term permits. The last two that PG&E has had have been 50-year permits. And part of that permit is a set of requirements for what happens at the end of the permit and or the end of the project's useful life.

So, that's where we get to a thing called decommissioning, which under FERC's rules can really mean anything from completely remove all the facilities and restore it to an entirely pre-installation status, all the way to, on the other end of the spectrum, lock the thing, send us the keys, walk away. Really, what decommissioning means is part of the question ahead of us here. What PG&E is telling us in this document called a license surrender application that it's just issued, just sent to FERC, is how it intends to go about first decommissioning the project, removing dams, and then ultimately surrendering its license back to FERC. So, once that happens, FERC doesn't have jurisdiction over the project anymore. It's not a federally licensed hydro project. It will still be a diversion under state rules, but not a FERC project.

HAMANN:

And so let's get into a little bit more detail about what the next, hopefully just a couple of years look like. So PG&E has just submitted this license surrender application to FERC. Soon there will be a chance for the public and all kinds of stakeholders to comment on that process. And I think we really want to emphasize that this is an opportunity to speak to FERC about this project. Over the next several years, we'll have many opportunities to speak to PG&E and to various state agencies. But this is one of our, possibly one of our last chances to speak to FERC about the project. And that's a really big deal. What, Scott, what do we expect to see from PG&E in the next few years? And ultimately, what are we hoping to see FERC do maybe, hopefully by 2028?

GREACEN:

I mean, the broad outline here is that PG&E is proposing to go ahead and remove both Scott and Cape Horn dams in a process it calls rapid removal, which would be hopefully a two-year process in which the river would be diverted around the lower dam, around Cape Horn dam, and the new control section and pumps for the new diversion to the Russian River would be constructed at the same time that Cape Horn and Scott dams are being mostly dismantled. And then, so that would happen in the summer of one year, and hopefully the next year would be a wet year, or at least not a dry year. And the second phase would be blowing those dams all at once and loosing not so much the water from Scott dam as the sediment load that's built up behind that dam. It's a lot of sediment and it will have serious impacts, but we can talk about that in a bit.

HAMANN:

Yeah, but so to back up, before we get to rapid removal, which we hope we will get to rapidly, we're gonna see PG&E, now that they've submitted this application, they're gonna have a series of public meetings to get into some of the fine details of aquatic management, sediment management, some of their restoration plans. So we're gonna have an opportunity to talk with them about those things. They're gonna have to secure a clean water permit from the state of California. And then hopefully, in a timely manner, FERC will issue a license surrender order. And that's, I think, the moment that things will really get rolling.

GREACEN:

Right. And so we'll have mitigation plans still to be worked out on the basis of the studies that PG&E is going to be doing in the next few years. So that's going to be a real active area of like, what do you need to do here? How much? But I want to emphasize pulling back again to that big picture that we don't really have much control, not Friends of the Eel, not civil society, not Congress over FERC. FERC is a very independent agency whose primary authority and direction is about energy, energy production and transmission. And so it's really important that we get lined up to get through FERC and get through FERC as quickly as possible. And that's where, again, support for this broadly is important, but it's also important that we figure out the obstacles so that we don't get hung up as previous projects have.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report.

HAMANN:

I can't help, but want to use this phrase, how FERC has kind of FERC'd up this summer and in previous summers. Let's talk about the variance. Yeah. Scott, do you want to give some, some background on the flows, the license ordered flows and what the project is capable of producing right now?

GREACEN:

Big picture again, until the year 2000, the project was operated basically to divert as much of the Eel River's flows to the Russian as PG&E could use to generate power and to direct it to irrigators on the Russian side. At that point, the National Marine Fisheries Service said, if you keep operating the dams this way, you're gonna jeopardize the existence of listed under the ESA, Steelhead and Chinook. This is a very, very big deal. That's the biggest thing that NIBS can say is this is a jeopardy situation.

So having said that, then NIBS could issue a new set of rules for flows in the Eel. And they did that, which considerably improved the overall situation, but left us in a position now today where with the reservoir having partly failed and its capacity reduced, as Alicia outlined, we still have these rules from 2003 that include continuing diversions to the Russian River. And following those rules for flow and diversions puts PG&E in the position now of basically causing take of and possibly jeopardy to juvenile steelhead that are trapped below Scott Dam, but above Cape Horn Dam, if they can't reduce diversions to the Russian River and hold on to the cold pool in the Lake Pillsbury Reservoir above Scott Dam, which requires FERC approval, because those flows are part of the license.

They're a very rigid thing. So we've been through this now, what, 10, 11 times with FERC where PG&E asks for a variance and then FERC thinks about it and sometimes says, okay, and then sometimes waits until October to say, okay. And this year they just decided to grant the variance, what was it, August 3rd, which is frankly too late. It is. The water's already gone to the Russian. It's not there in the cold pool. And the juvenile steelhead below Scott Dam are facing a real crisis now.

HAMANN:

To just give people, those of you who have like numbers minds, generally we want to keep temperatures below about 18 degrees Celsius for steelhead to thrive. At above that, they start being vulnerable to more predation by the invasive pike minnow and pike minnow are out competing them, eating their food, whipping circles around them. At about 22 degrees Celsius, we start seeing the water just be straight up lethal for steelhead. And so obviously PG&E has asked FERC for permission to start changing the flow of the river when temperatures are at about 15 degrees Celsius. They say at that point, we can still have some control. We can slow down the flow to the Russian and we can hold onto that cold water and protect it. But when the variance was approved just a couple of days ago, temperatures were, I think at 21 and a half degrees Celsius. So that tells me that we have passed the threshold at which we could possibly be protective of the habitat for these fish.

WHEELER:

All right, so I'm gonna try to summarize the things that we have talked about here for folks. So we have a deadbeat dam that needs to come out and that the owner of the dam, PG&E, two deadbeat dams, excuse me, a water project, a water project that includes two deadbeat dams that the owner of said water project and deadbeat dams wants to come out. The owner, Pacific Gas and Electric, PG&E, has submitted a surrender, license surrender ...

GREACEN:

A licensed surrender application.

WHEELER:

... to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates hydroelectric dams, of which there is a hydroelectric component of this project. And now we wait to see if FERC will approve this surrender application. And we are probably going to want to drive comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And I imagine that if folks want to keep on top of this, they should go to eelriver.org to learn more. And there's probably going to be some sort of a way to get people to submit.

GREACEN:

This is a critical moment for public input in this long, long process. FERC doesn't often take public comment. And because the license surrender application is in its form, it's 2300 page form, basically the same as a license application, it contains information about every aspect of the project. Anything people wanna think about, talk about is gonna be relevant here. And it's very important that we get both the details and the volume of that commentary into the record because FERC is not gonna go looking for it. They don't know the Eel, they don't know anything about fish, they don't care about that stuff. Their thing is power. And this is really not about electricity at all, as you've said, which makes it all the more difficult for FERC to see it clearly.

And there are a lot of interests in this mix, despite the broad support for this proposal from the key players, there's still folks in Lake County who are really upset, their reservoir is gonna go away. There are folks in Mendocino and Sonoma who really would love to just maintain the status quo because they don't understand the downside of that, and the risks inherent in it.

HAMANN:

To put a little finer point on that, the way that water is currently released from Scott Dam is through what is called a needle valve that sits near the bottom of the dam. Not all the way at the bottom because it would be completely covered by sediment if that were the case. But it is very close to being completely covered by sediment and that's part of the reason, yet another reason, way in which this project has failed is that the reservoir cannot be completely emptied because there are these walls of sediment that line the reservoir and could surround the intake for this needle valve on the inside of the dam.

So if PG&E were to fully empty the reservoir, they're concerned that those walls of sediment would collapse and block the needle valve. But you know what else could cause that? Some slight seismic activity.

GREACEN:

A landslide in a big rainstorm.

HAMANN:

In our mind, the water users who have really embraced this modern diversion, despite change is difficult, it's going to change the seasonality of the diversion, they're going to have to start paying for their water, yikes. But those water users who have embraced this modern diversion are actually very wise because I think they recognize that the status quo is vulnerable to failure really at any moment.

So that I think is one of the reasons why we should go to FERC and say, look, there is broad community support, we have a united front that nearly everyone who is thinking about this critically supports dam removal. And that's, I think, one of the most important things that the general public can say in their comments to FERC.

Tom, you mentioned that folks could go to eelriver.org to find details about submitting comments. It's not technically on our website yet, but perhaps by the time this episode airs, it will be. FERC has not actually opened the comment period yet. So while people can begin working on their comments now, and we will soon have tips up on our website for people to do so, it's not actually, like, the inbox isn't actually opened at FERC.

WHEELER:

Apologies for that. And I should say that when this moment does arrive, I'm pretty sure all of the North Coast environmental groups will be supporting Friends of the Eel River in driving comments. So you'll undoubtedly hear about it from someone. It will be a thing that's going to be happening.

GREACEN:

This thing's 2300 pages. You can get started now.

HAMANN:

And I will say too, one thing that Scott was kind of getting at is this idea that we need to give FERC all the information we can right now. This is a dense document and similarly dense was the draft that PG&E released to the public back in January this year. One of the things that we found in that draft is when we asked our wildlife experts, our native plant experts to look at it, they pointed out so many little details that PG&E had gotten wrong, things that had been omitted, species that they said weren't present that are clearly present if you look in the right database.

And so for those of you who have a little bit of expertise in those areas, you might want to dig into this document and look at the, if you are, if you are like an expert in birds in this region, look and see which species PG&E says are present and says could possibly be impacted by this project and put your two cents in there. Make sure that they are considering everything that should be considered.

GREACEN:

For example, until relatively late in preparing those comments, I didn't even realize that beavers weren't mentioned at all in the draft. And we put together a few pages of relevant points, but that's a big consideration. That's a key part of the ecosystem we need to put back in place. And you don't have to be a PhD expert with 20 years experience to have some insights on this.

WHEELER:

Well, so I imagine this is terribly exciting for Friends of the Eel River. Friends of the Eel River, as I understand it, came into being to advocate for Eel River dam removal, and this has been on your radar now for 30 years. And there's a 30th anniversary celebration coming up real soon. Alicia, want to tell us about how we can celebrate Friends of the Eel River and celebrate dam removal?

HAMANN:

I would be delighted. So many nonprofits have these big banquet celebrations every year as part of their fundraising drives and their networking. Friends of the Eel River does not often do that. So we are having a big celebration on September 6th at the Fortuna River Lodge. This is a unique and rare opportunity to celebrate all the work that we've done, celebrate many of our donors and supporters and board members and volunteers, people who have been with us from the very beginning.

I am constantly surprised by how many people whose names I see over and over again submitting comments to FERC and alerting us to illegal diversions or pollution or various things happening. Like lots of people have their eyes on this watershed and their heart in the effort to recover it. So we're gonna celebrate that all. Tickets are available now. Eelriver.org is where you can find information about that. It's gonna be a huge celebration. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We are gonna play Eel River Jeopardy. You can see some of your favorite Eel River experts, elected officials, folks in the hotspot. We are gonna have some VIP presentations. If I get everything together, we are gonna have an awesome photo booth. There's an incredible silent auction. We've got pack rafts, we've got wine, we've got art. So once again, it is gonna be at the Fortuna River Lodge on September 6th. That's a Saturday. It's a fun evening event you can come on out to. Catered dinner, drinks, the whole shebang. Yeah, I hope to see you all there. We're gonna have a really good time.

WHEELER:

All right, well, that sounds super fun. And I also wanted to highlight that the Friends of the Eel River are expanding and you have a new staff member. At this moment where you're rising to meet the occasion, you are bringing on staff to help meet the moment, right? So tell us about your new staffer and what she's gonna bring to the organization.

HAMANN:

Well, we are a historically lean team. For many years, our staff has been three, at most four people. So we are once again at the upper limits of our staffing where we've brought on a fourth team member, Julie Weter. Many of you may know her from her former role with NOAA Fisheries as the recovery coordinator and ecologist. She comes to us with just a great depth of knowledge about the Eel River, about the various projects that we work on, and she's going to be helping us launch some new projects and really expand our capacity to ensure that we are addressing all of the things that restrict recovery of fisheries in the Eel River.

WHEELER:

That's totally exciting, and I want to make a plug for Friends of the Yale River. Come out to this event on September 6th, and also give your love and support to the Friends at other times throughout the year. Make a donation online, YaleRiver.org. As the leader of a sister environmental organization, it's really nice that Friends of the Yale River exists because I always know that, like, really trustworthy, smart, capable people are handling this, like, really important issue. But seriously, Friends of the Yale River is terribly important. It's terribly important to me, so go online, give some love and support to Friends of the Yale River, YaleRiver.org. Scott, Alicia, thank you so much. I'm excited. Scott, I imagine your eyes are probably strained from reading all 2300 pages or whatever it is. Thanks for doing the hard labor, my friend, and we'll have you back on the show the next time that there's some exciting news in the Yale River.

HAMANN:

All right.

GREACEN:

Probably be in about 20 minutes when the Lost Coast Outpost puts up the story about our groundwater lawsuit, but yeah.

WHEELER:

All right. Well, maybe we'll have you back on a little bit later this month. All right. Thanks for joining us. And thank you listeners for joining us. Join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.