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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me as a co-host for today's show is my good friend, Alicia Bales, Chapter Director of the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club. Hey, Alicia.

ALICIA BALES:

Hey, Tom, it's so great to be here since I've listened to your podcast so many times for so many years.

WHEELER:

Well, I'm so thrilled to have you as a co-host on this show because one, you're a wonderful friend. And then two, I'm so excited that you are the chapter director of the Redwood chapter of the Sierra Club. And I think that you're going to bring some great energy to that group. And so just want to hug you in tight into our North Coast enviro world. And so hopefully this is the first of many shows that we can co-host together.

BALES:

And it's entirely mutual.

WHEELER:

Oh, thank you. So confusingly, our guest today is Alicia Hamann of Friends of the Eel River, Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River. So we are going to try to do our best to differentiate which Alicias we're talking to today. So Alicia Hamann, welcome to the Econews Report.

ALICIA HAMANN:

Hey Tom, you know I was just chuckling to myself thinking every time I'm on Econews Report these days, just about every time, I'm here to talk about Eel River Dam removal and it must be like just such a spoiler every time people hear my name they're like, well now I know what I'm going to listen to.

WHEELER:

All right, well, so you've previewed the show, which is Eel River Dam Removal, and now we are at a critical moment in Eel River Dam Removal, but let's go back to the beginning and talk about the Potter Valley Project in case folks are living under a rock or newly moved to the area. They may not have heard about the Potter Valley Project, what it is and why it's bad. So Alicia Hamann, take it away.

HAMANN:

Yeah, so in the headwaters of the Eel River, there are two century-old dams that are part of the Potter Valley Project. And those dams are a failed hydroelectric project owned by PG&E since about 1930, but they are a little older than that. And the way that they used to generate electricity is by sending water through a diversion tunnel that goes for a mile through a mountain out of the Eel River watershed and into the Russian River watershed, where there's a small powerhouse that, like I said, used to generate electricity but no longer does.

However, there is still a diversion that occurs because PG&E has contractual obligations to supply water to water users in the Russian River watershed. This project, like any hundred-year-old infrastructure, we know a lot more now than we used to. For example, now we know not to build dams right on fault lines because we understand plate tectonics. Amazing what you can learn in 100 years. So this project, in addition to being a failed hydroelectric project and incredibly expensive for PG&E and, more importantly, for ratepayers, it also poses some really serious safety risks, particularly in the event of a seismic activity.

WHEELER:

All right, so you've said that it's a failed hydroelectric project, and even though it's a failed hydroelectric project, it's still a hydroelectric project under the eyes of our government. And so it is regulated by some entity called FERC. What is FERC?

HAMANN:

Yeah, what the FERC. So that is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and they're responsible for managing electrical projects throughout the country that includes like pipelines and all kinds of other electrical infrastructure. And so that's why they are tasked with managing this project. And we are now at the very beginning of the FERC process to decommission this project. And while we have been talking about Eel River Dam removal for quite a long time now, we're actually right now in the very early stages of the FERC process to decommission the project.

WHEELER:

All right, so we have a dam owner who wants these dams gone, who has applied to FERC to say, hey, we don't think that these dams are necessary. We don't want them anymore. We would like to decommission them. And now we have FERC with some sort of responsibility or ability to allow for dam removal. Do I get that all right?

HAMANN:

Basically, yeah, so the way that this works, years ago, FERC issues hydropower licenses for 50 years at a time. So every time one of those licenses comes up for renewal, it's kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the way a project is managed, change some elements of the project, or get the project decommissioned. So PG&E's license for this project expired in 2022. They are now operating under annual licenses, which is a bit of a misnomer because they can actually be extended indefinitely, but that's a whole nother story. So before that license expired in 2022, PG&E started the process thinking that they were going to re-license the project. And eventually they said, you know what, actually, let's see if anybody wants to buy this. No, nobody wants to buy it.

And then FERC did what's called an orphan project process to see if anyone wanted to take over the project. They were willing to accept bids from folks and no qualified bids came in. And so eventually we got to the place where PG&E basically started the process to surrender their license. And once they started that process, they legally cannot go back on that, nor do they want to. So there's no legal way to require PG&E to continue operating this project. FERC, in fact, cannot deny a license surrender application. They can take 20 years to approve one, which we really hope they don't do, but FERC cannot make PG&E continue to operate this project against their will.

BALES:

Right, and this is where the listeners come in, right? Because we also have another dam removal. This is Alicia Bales, by the way, the other Alicia. We also have another dam removal example within our region, which is the Klamath dams. And I was talking with somebody who was very involved in the Klamath dam removal, who said seven to eight years between the time of the license surrender and the FERC approval, the license surrender. And then it took another two to three years for the dams to be removed, which sounds to me lightning fast in terms of the way that these gears move, but that we really have a role to play in asking the federal government to not take 20 years, but to actually get these dams out in a timely manner because there are a lot of very high stakes for the fish in the Eel River.

HAMANN:

That's right. Not only is it high stakes for the fish, frequent listeners have heard me talk about the somewhat magical story of the summer steelhead and the remnant genetics for summer steelhead that live on in the trout that are trapped behind Scott Dam. If we can free those fish, their future offspring will become summer steelhead again, but those genetics could be bred out eventually if we wait too long.

Not only that, but the project of course, causes ongoing harms to the Eel's native fish every year that it's in place, but also, and this is something that should matter to folks in both river basins, Scott Dam is teetering on this brink of, of a risk of catastrophic failure. And no, I'm not talking about the earthquake that will crumble the dam down and be a big dramatic thing. I'm talking about the sediment that has accumulated behind Scott Dam and basically surrounds the only low level water outlet that releases water out of that dam. PG&E has developed a lot of rules for themselves around how they manage the water level in the reservoir, because they're extremely worried that a little bit of water moving too quickly, a slight landslide, shoot, maybe some kids even throwing rocks into the reservoir could make that sediment collapse and block the only way that water is released from Scott Dam. And if that happens, that of course stops the flow of water down the upper main stem eel, which is terrible for the eel river, but we do have other inputs further downstream, but importantly, it would completely stop any diversions to the Russian river as well.

And this is why when we talk about Scott Dam being unsafe, we also talk about it being unreliable as a water supply project.

WHEELER:

And so perhaps we should talk about the impact of the Russian River and some of the complicated politics of dam removal here, because I think to a lot of listeners in Humboldt County, it's obvious that we should remove these Eel River dams because they are just blocking our Eel River and the Potter Valley project enables water diversions to the Russian River system. But maybe if you're a listener somewhere else, if you are a Russian River resident, you might like that the steel water from the Eel to put into the Russian. So there's this complicated politics on the North coast on Eel River dam removal. Alicia Hamann, can you talk about some of these politics and how dam removal is navigating these?

HAMANN:

Yes. And you know, I will say that the thing that our local media has really failed to pick up is the remarkable story of negotiation and compromise that has led to where we are now. So 120 years ago, the community of Potter Valley, which is the community that's like immediately downstream from where that diversion comes out at the top end of the east branch of the Russian River, that community used to be a dry farming community because it is a very arid region. They don't have reliable year round water. But once the diversion was put in place, and the water from the electrical generation at the Potter Valley powerhouse was considered kind of just like a waste byproduct, if you will, they suddenly found themselves with abundant water supply for very, very cheap. And so they built up this unique economy and culture using that water.

Personally, myself and the organization Friends of the Eel River, we would prefer to see that diversion ended entirely. But the reality is that there are some people who really depend on that for their livelihood. And so finding a negotiation, negotiating to find a compromise was really the right path forward. And so what stakeholders in both basins, Friends of the Eel was not part of this negotiation, but other organizations, including Humboldt County, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, Cal Trout, Trout Unlimited, Sonoma Water, and the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife, all those entities together reached an agreement that would see everyone in that group supporting dam removal, and everyone in that group supporting a dam free diversion that would change the timing of the diversion from the eel to be a wet season only diversion so that it causes no harm to the eel river habitat, but still provides water to Russian river water users.

BALES:

Right, and this is Alicia Bales from the Redwood chapter of the Sierra Club, and of course our chapter goes from Napa and Solano all the way up to the Oregon border. So both of these, both of the two basins are within our chapter, and I myself live just a few miles from the east branch of the Russian River. I live in the Russian River myself, and I live in Ukiah, which is one of the entities that uses some of this water that comes through, because it comes through the Russian River into Lake Mendocino, that's where we currently store that water, past Potter Valley, right?

So the community of Potter Valley is a small community, it's very rural, and they probably stand to be the hardest hit by the dam removal and the seasonal diversion, the change to their community, they're used to abundant, cheap water flowing literally in ditches all year round through the valley, and this is going to be a big change for them. But there are many water users down the Russian who also use this water and wade in quite strongly about the two basin solution, including Lake County. Lake County hasn't been very happy with the way that this plan has come through, but I can tell you, this has been one of those wicked problems, right? Just for so long, there seemed to be no solution, and when the negotiations started between all the stakeholders that Alicia Hamann described, there was a time when the two basin solution idea was announced, and suddenly there did seem to be a way forward. Both sides worked together in good faith to negotiate this agreement, and both sides had to give up something that they dearly wanted. The Russian River Basin side had to give up the dam, and the Eel River Basin side had to give up some water, a seasonal diversion, and it was threading a needle, but they did it, and it's kind of an incredible, it's kind of miraculous, actually, that they were able to stay at the table together, and I know that it wasn't easy, but over the course of years, they developed this two basin solution, and that's the plan that we're working on now.

That's what's going to make it possible for both basins to come together and support dam removal, which is urgently needed, and then, of course, in the Redwood chapter, we're also looking at the ecological situation for the upper Russian, right? Before the water gets down to the urban areas of Sonoma County, there's a whole bunch of water coming out of there for different uses, and that part of the river is also ecologically fragile and needs to be considered as well in the subsequent years as we continue these talks about bringing the fish back and the restoration of both of these basins.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. Our guest is Alicia Hamann, Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River. And now we are at a critical moment in Eel River dam removal. So it seems that most of the kind of major players have accepted this two basin solution. And we've figured out this compromise that will allow for wet weather diversions that are not gonna be as impactful to the Eel River. So this seems kind of like a win-win that we have a way to move forward and we're not gonna be fighting amongst each other here on the North Coast, generally.

That said, there are some weirdos that have not accepted the idea of a two basin solution and are fighting against this. And I imagine are talking to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or FERC in opposition to Eel River dam removal. Alicia Hamann, can you talk about some of the fringe here but also the risk of fringe because frankly, the Trump administration is built on listening and responding to some of these more fringe elements.

HAMANN:

Yes, they are, aren't they? Well, I'll start off by saying that I, I always like to assume the best in people, right? And so when I see someone speaking out really aggressively against something that I believe in, I often think, well, maybe they just don't have the right information. And I do think that's a part of the problem here. The reality is that for the last several years, the amount of the diversion has been between 30 and 40,000 acre feet a year. And Potter Valley, that first community that gets the water uses almost half of that. And so the remaining amount of water that is held in Lake Mendocino and used by other water users is actually not a very substantial amount of water.

And so one thing that we have seen for years and years and years is this claim that there's half a million people who rely on this water. But there's not -- there are half a million people who are served by Sonoma water, and who are under the umbrella of that entity that uses some of this water. But it's, it's unlikely that every one of those households even gets a gallon of river water, there's just not that much that's diverted. So that's one thing that I think is really important for people to understand. And we are starting to see some of the water contractors under Sonoma water's umbrella, start to talk about like, hey, wait a minute, if we're going to pay higher rates for this new diversion system, we want that to be proportional to the benefits that we're receiving, aka, they're saying, we want to know how much of that Eel River water we're really getting, and then we'll pay an amount that's that's appropriate for how much water we're actually receiving is that information that Sonoma water has not to our knowledge.

So there's, there's still this like tricky issue of making sure that costs and and benefits and the Russian Riverside are equitable. There are other elements of opposition to dam removal, for example, folks who own vacation homes around Lake Pillsbury reservoir, the reality is the reservoir will be gone when the dams are removed. And that's that's going to be a huge change. People will have a beautiful meadow and a free flowing wild and scenic river and hopefully a robust salmon and steelhead population that eventually they can fish off of and like have a great time with. So there will be other benefits. But yeah, seeing that that transition and change is going to be really difficult for people. And then there's this interesting element of folks from far outside of both basins who are joining in in this opposition.

And what I have learned from some of our friends on the Klamath is that folks who oppose the Klamath dam removal are spreading, they're going up to Oregon, they're coming down to the Eel, and they're sharing their hatred of dam removal with other communities. And in fact, we recently saw a letter submitted to FERC a whole bunch of signatures from people in opposition to dam removal. And many of those people were actually from Siskiyou County. So there's there are a variety of folks who continue to oppose dam removal or have concerns about it. But I really do think that for those who have actual like based in reality concerns, a little bit of additional information could help to ease those concerns.

BALES:

You know, one of the things about the Klamath Dam removal is it's very instructive for us as dam removal proponents, especially the amazing benefits that are just far greater than anyone ever anticipated. The fish are coming back in numbers that no one ever expected and the water quality is just incredibly better. But there's something instructive for Siskiyou County as well because Siskiyou County was so opposed to the dam removal in the Klamath that they actually ended up missing out on many of the benefits to communities in the negotiations. There was a lot of money for jobs and infrastructure and things that Siskiyou County, because of their vociferous opposition, didn't get to be included in. And so I think that for both quote-unquote sides of this issue, it's really instructive to look to the Klamath and try to avoid making the same mistakes. So yeah, the opposition as well as the supporters.

WHEELER:

So we have this opportunity now, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, is taking public comment on dam decommissioning at this moment. And I think that we want to have a groundswell of support for dam removal coming from diverse communities that care about the Eel River, that care about this two-basin compromise that was generated through a lot of hard political work. Alicia Hamann, can you talk about commenting and talking to FERC and telling them how you're telling the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that you care about dam removal and you support it and that you wanted to see it move forward with alacrity? How do we go about doing this?

HAMANN:

Yes, well, I'll start off by saying you do not need any kind of special expertise or advanced knowledge or anything to write to FERC. You can literally write to FERC and say, I care about the Eel River. Please take out the dams quickly. It's it's what you say should come from your heart and be personalized. FERC does not especially want to see hundreds of the same form letter over and over again. And their process makes that actually a little bit difficult. It is slightly more complicated than just sending off an email to one of your elected representatives, for example. You do have to go onto the FERC website and register. Go back to your own email, click on a link, and then you can submit your comments. We have instructions for how to do that at eelriver.org. If you prefer to snail mail in your comments, you can totally do that as well. You could handwrite your comments at one of our lovely in-person workshops coming up over the next two weeks. But point being, whatever you want to say and if you want to send it electronically or with a stamp on an envelope, you can find instructions for doing that at eelriver.org. We do have some workshops coming up. Alicia, do you want to talk about the one in Mendocino?

BALES:

Yes, this is Alicia Bales. We're going to host, CR Club is hosting an in-person workshop, and Charlie Schneider from Caltrout is going to be there, and he's going to walk us through the process, so that would be a great time to learn how to do this if you've never commented before and you'd like in-person help. And we're going to do that in Ukiah on November 18th, and that'll be from 5 to 7 p.m., and you can register for that workshop at our website, which is CRClub.org slash Redwood, and we'll have a little registration form there. You can click on our chapter calendar on the 18th, and there's a registration form there.

WHEELER:

And it's worth going to this just to meet Charlie Schneider because I think that he's one of the coolest people in the conservation movement. I love this guy.

HAMANN:

He is a very cool guy. If any of you are fishermen, he's a great guy to be out on the river with too. We are also going to host a virtual workshop. The virtual workshop is planned for Wednesday the 12th at 6 p.m. Friends of the Eel is hosting that in partnership with Save California Salmon and so you can again find information about that at eelriver.org. If you're not a website person and you like to use Instagram or Facebook, our handle is at Friends Eel River. We should be pretty easy to find and then we are also planning another in-person workshop for the Arcata Eureka area but it is still in the planning phases so you'll have to just check out our website or our socials to figure out where else you can find us.

BALES:

And this is one of those things that it's a 30 day comment period. So the deadline is on December 1st. That's why we're putting up all of these workshops as fast as possible. So yeah, stay tuned to our websites and our socials to kind of follow things as they unfold.

WHEELER:

And most, if not all of these links and all this information will be included in the show notes, which you can find on the lostcoastoutpost.com as well. But eelriver.org is also a fantastic source for, for things too. So eelriver.org, lostcoastoutpost.com, check it out. Okay. So Alicia Hayman, we are going to generate just a ton of letters. I can feel it. I can, I can sense it in the air that this is going to be a big time for the community to come together to say, we want these dams out and we want them out fast. Looking into your crystal ball, let's, let's say we get a bunch of letters in thousands to FERC. What is the timeline? What's the process? What's next?

HAMANN:

Oh, man, if I had a FERC crystal ball, I could rule this nation. I tell you, FERC is a really unpredictable entity, unfortunately. What I can tell you is that, like Alicia Bales said, this climate period ends December 1st. We are hopeful that or at least PG&E has kind of projected that they will be able to finish all of their detailed planning work. That's like management plans for like how to protect aquatic species during dam removal, what kinds of restoration they need to do following dam removal to prevent erosion and and, you know, deal with the footprint of the reservoir. They're working on those detailed plans, and they believe that they'll be finished with those in about two or three years. And they are hopeful that that's the time period in which FERC might issue a license surrender order.

Now, that's probably a bit quick, but PG&E said at first that they think the dam that the license surrender order could be issued as early as 2028. I wouldn't I wouldn't put my money on that. We do also have a state process going on. It's actually underway right now. The California State Water Board has just started the process of issuing a clean water certification for this project. So they're going to look at all those impacts of like, you know, where is the sediment going to move? How quickly is it going to move? How much is it going to clog up spawning gravels and all that kind of stuff? How much of that sediment is going to end up in the ocean and move north up into Humboldt Bay? The water board's going to look at all of that and ultimately issue a permit with, you know, some kinds of conditions and things like that to make sure that PG&E is really doing their best to mitigate any impacts from this project.

But when all of that is said and done and FERC eventually issues a license surrender order, PG&E's plan then is to is to remove the dams with a process called rapid removal. That calls for about two years, given the right weather conditions. So we'll see a huge plug of sediment move through the watershed, just like on the Klamath. The Eel is a sediment mover. It is the most sediment-heavy watershed in the entire lower 48. So it's it's really good at moving sediment. And we have faith that the Eel will be able to move that sediment right along and clean itself up following dam removal.

BALES:

Alicia, is there a chance that the more comments we get, the faster FERC will respond? Is there a relationship there?

HAMANN:

So the idea behind the water diversion agreement, and that's that two basin solution that all those entities worked so hard on. The idea there is that if we can give FERC kind of a neatly tied up package and say, look, people in both basins support this, there's broad community support. Please just go ahead and do your analysis and then issue a license surrender order quickly. You don't have to deal with a bunch of conflict and like look into lawsuits and all these things. If we can give them a nice tidy package, they're more likely to issue a license surrender in a timely manner. So from the Eel River perspective, that was like the biggest part of why we support the water diversion agreement because entities that formerly opposed dam removal to now support it. So if we can also show FERC thousands of people writing in saying, I support this, I support this, I support this, that's really gonna send a strong message to the agency.

WHEELER:

So I'm just excited because I can see dam removal on the horizon and having had the experience from the Klamath and having had salmon come back within a year to streams that they haven't been to in over a hundred years, just how impactful dam removal will be for the Eel River. So I want to encourage folks to get out there, to write comments, to engage in our government in in this comment writing exercise.

So again, the key resources are eelriver.org. Go there, you'll find all the information that you'll need to submit a comment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or FERC. You can also go to the lostcoastoutpost.com and we'll have links online there or check out a in-person comment writing workshop like the one that the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club is hosting in Ukiah. A fantastic opportunity. I know that it seems antiquated, but a handwritten letter honestly means something these days in a way that just an email doesn't. So get out there, write your letters, submit them, feel good, and let's get these dams removed. Alicia Bales, thank you so much for co-hosting with me.

BALES:

Oh, it's been so much fun. Thanks, Tom.

WHEELER:

And Alicia Hamann, thank you so much for joining the show and for all the work that Friends of the Eel River is doing to get these dams out.

HAMANN:

Yes, of course, let's free the Eel.

WHEELER:

All right. Join us again on this time channel next week for more information from the North Coast of California.