As advocates for removal of the Eel River dams, we and our allies at The Native Fish Society, Fly Fishers International, American Whitewater, and The Sierra Club Redwood Chapter offered comments to the State Water Resources Control Board, (SWRCB or “Board”). These came in response to the Board’s pending Environmental Impact Report (EIR) regarding the process of decommissioning the Eel River dams (“Proposed Project”). Our suggestions with respect to the scope and content of the environmental information to be included in the Board’s EIR are informed by decades of focus on the complex issues presented by Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) Potter Valley Project (PVP), including the Eel River dams whose removal is the subject of the Proposed Project.
PG&E is in the process of surrendering its hydroelectric license with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to operate the Potter Valley Project. The Proposed Project — to remove the PVP’s Scott and Cape Horn Dams on the upper mainstem Eel River — is PG&E’s proposal to FERC to decommission PVP facilities as part of that license surrender process. PG&E is surrendering its license and decommissioning the Eel River dams for its own reasons, which it has repeatedly stated are economic. At this stage in the license surrender process, neither PG&E nor any other entity can obtain a new FERC license to operate the PVP and its dams.
To the extent the PVP still functions, there are reasons for concern it may be subject to sudden failure, entailing very serious water quality impacts. However, while the PVP does continue to operate, significant and potentially disastrous temperature impacts on Eel River steelhead are likely to continue, at a minimum until FERC completes its approval of a proposed amendment to the PVP annual license.
Because our support for dam removal springs from our goals of fisheries and river restoration, we particularly appreciate the Board’s role in protecting water quality under its certification authority pursuant to Section 401 of the Clean Water Act. The Section 401 process is California’s strongest tool to ensure PG&E’s dam removal project improves water quality, restores habitat, and protects downstream communities and Tribal resources in the Eel River watershed.
As PG&E has documented in its License Surrender Application, the Proposed Project will result in a number of unavoidable adverse effects, including discharges into the Eel River which clearly trigger the present review. PG&E writes that “Rapid Dam Removal would result in the flushing of a large volume of sediment (approximately 12 million cubic yards …) downstream of the remnant reservoir into the Eel River.” Because of the scope and nature of the Proposed Project, the SWRCB’s conditions of certification will provide essential sideboards to minimize water quality and other harms and secure the benefits of dam removal.
Our comments emphasize that:
- The affected area includes the entire mainstem Eel River, estuary, and nearshore marine area. The affected area of the Proposed Project in the Eel River extends far beyond Project footprint. It ranges from the streams feeding the Lake Pillsbury reservoir, downstream the entire length of the mainstem Eel River, through the Eel River estuary, and into adjacent nearshore marine habitat.
- Current conditions are the appropriate environmental baseline. It is not feasible to return to a prior flow regime such as that in place before Eel River salmonids were listed under the Endangered Species Act, before the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Biological Opinion changed flows in the Eel and Russian Rivers, or before PG&E decided to limit the capacity of Lake Pillsbury to protect the dam.
- The SWRCB’s restoration policy is appropriately applied here. The SWRCB’s policy recognizes that the long term benefits from aquatic ecosystem restoration can outweigh even very serious short term adverse effects of restoration actions.
- This certification, like the Proposed Project, is urgently needed. Scott and Cape Horn Dams and their supporting infrastructure are vulnerable to irreparable damage from natural processes.
- Eel River fisheries need immediate relief. The Proposed Project will both reduce or eliminate chronic harms to Eel River Chinook and steelhead and provide enormous benefits by restoring access to a large area of habitat.
- The Klamath dam removal process is a useful guide. The SWRCB’s April 2020 certification for Klamath dam removals offers many instructive parallels, as well as some important differences, to the situation we find on the upper mainstem Eel River.
- We support analyzing impacts of a new diversion works separately. As much as many of us would in fact have preferred to end the interbasin transfer to the Russian River, we support continuing it through the New Eel-Russian Facility as long as dam removal is completed quickly and effectively.
We can only empathize with SWRCB water quality staff in this matter. As noted, the successful implementation of Klamath dam removals with SWRCB guidance offers us real hope that this process will be easier for agencies like SWRCB to repeat for the Eel River. We thank the Board for its attention to these issues.