{"id":140930,"date":"2025-08-12T23:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140930\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T23:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T23:45:11","slug":"at-virtual-public-meeting-last-night-pge-officials-outline-next-steps-for-eel-river-dam-removal-lost-coast-outpost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140930\/","title":{"rendered":"At Virtual Public Meeting Last Night, PG&E Officials Outline Next Steps for Eel River Dam Removal | Lost Coast Outpost"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Scott Dam, with Lake Pillsbury behind it. | Photo: PG&E<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

At a virtual town hall meeting last night, Pacific Gas & Electric Company officials went over the painstaking federal regulatory process that lies ahead as the utility prepares to decommission and dismantle the defunct Potter Valley Project \u2014 a two-dam hydroelectric system that has delivered flows from the Eel River basin to communities in the Russian River watershed for more than 100 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

PG&E recently submitted a Surrender Application and Decommissioning Plan<\/a> for the defunct hydropower project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), kicking off a years-long governmental and public review process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the proposal moves forward as planned, PG&E will demolish much of the power station, which has been offline since 2021<\/a>, and tear down both Scott and Cape Horn dams, draining Lake Pillsbury in Lake County and Van Arsdale Reservoir in Mendocino County. Once demolition is complete, the Eel-Russian Project Authority (ERPA)<\/a> will assume responsibility for the diversion tunnel and construct the New Eel-Russian Facility (NERF) at the Cape Horn Dam site to ensure the continued transfer of flows to the Russian River. The whole process is expected to take at least 10 years to complete.<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Digital renderings of the new water diversion project. | Image via ERPA.<\/p>\n

While last night\u2019s meeting largely focused on the tedious FERC regulatory process and timeline for decommissioning, one simple question from the public stood out from the rest: \u201cWhat is the benefit of removing the dams? I\u2019m not understanding why this needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, the project is economically unsustainable, said PG&E Senior License Project Manager Tony Gigliotti.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very small project, and it\u2019s very costly to operate for us,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has not generated at that capacity for quite some time, and ultimately, it\u2019s in our customers\u2019 best interest for the project to be surrendered and decommissioned because we could purchase the generating capability on the open market for less than what it was costing us to generate. It wasn\u2019t an easy decision for us. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand the importance of the project to the area \u2026 and it took a lot of thought for us to come to that determination.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2019, PG&E informed FERC that it would not renew its license for the Potter Valley Project, which initiated the so-called \u201corphan\u201d process to find other entities interested in relicensing the project. However, no one went through the process, and FERC \u201ccannot require a licensee to keep and operate a project,\u201d Gigliotti said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2022, when nobody completed those steps, FERC requested that PG&E provide a plan and schedule for the surrender and decommissioning of the project,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe provided the plan and schedule, made two drafts of our Surrender Application and Decommissioning Plan available to the public, and then filed [the final document] last month on July 25.\u201d<\/p>\n

After its initial review, FERC and PG&E will move on to federal permitting, environmental review through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), as depicted in the timeline below.<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNext, FERC will issue a surrender order \u2026 which will contain a list of conditions that need to be implemented by PG&E,\u201d Gigliotti said. \u201cThe issuance of that order from FERC doesn\u2019t mean that construction starts right away. It means you may start implementing the following conditions. \u2026 There could be a one- to two-year gap between the issuance of the order and when PG&E is out in the field performing construction activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decommissioning process is expected to wrap up by 2030, but construction of the NERF could take another five years.<\/p>\n

The proposal to demolish the upper Eel River dams has drawn both praise and criticism from Northern California communities that have long been at odds over ownership and control of water diverted from the Eel River. Still, a great many of them have been able to set aside their differences to join ERPA \u2014 a joint powers authority representing Sonoma Water, Mendocino Inland Water and Power Commission, Round Valley Indian Tribes, California Trout, Trout Unlimited and the California Department of Fish & Wildlife.<\/p>\n

Last month, each of the aforementioned parties, as well as the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors<\/a>, approved water diversion agreements in support of dam removal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPartners came together in what\u2019s termed the \u2018two-basin partnership\u2019 to try to achieve two co-equal goals,\u201d said ERPA Executive Director David Manning. \u201cOne is to improve fish migration habitat on the Eel River with the objective of achieving naturally reproducing, self-sustaining anadromous fish populations, and the second is to continue diversion from the Eel to the Russian through the existing tunnel that\u2019s a part of the existing Potter Valley project, in a way that supports all the beneficial uses of water in the Russian River Basin.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next, you ask? FERC will inform the parties that the surrender application has \u201cofficially\u201d been accepted and issue a 30-day public comment period, though there\u2019s no telling when it will be announced. In the meantime, you can read the massive 2,324-page document at this link<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

PREVIOUSLY:<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scott Dam, with Lake Pillsbury behind it. | Photo: PG&E ### At…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":140931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-140930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}