Fishing and Conservation Groups Sue PG&E over Harms to Salmon and Steelhead on Eel River

Fishing and Conservation Groups Sue PG&E over Harms to Salmon and Steelhead on Eel River Groups take legal action to reduce lethal impacts on imperiled fish from utility’s operation of outdated hydroelectric Potter Valley Project dams San Francisco — A coalition of five commercial fishing and conservation groups have filed suit in federal court charging … Read more

Friends of the Eel River Celebrates Most Endangered River Listing for California’s Eel River

Eel River America's 6th Most Endangered River

We are grateful that the Eel River has been selected by American Rivers as one of America’s Most Endangered Rivers®! The list features ten rivers at a crossroads with real opportunity in the coming year to address serious threats. In the Eel River, two dams owned by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) block access to … Read more

Scott Dam and its Shaky Seismic Stability

Tune into the EcoNews Report for big news about Eel River dam removal – PG&E is finally taking dam safety seriously! On March 16 the company announced big changes to how they will manage Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury reservoir, based on an updated evaluation of seismic stability and dam safety. Dam removal advocates at … Read more

PG&E Admits Scott Dam Faces Serious Seismic Risks

Geologic map showing "the knocker".

PG&E Admits Scott Dam Faces Serious Seismic Risks In a March 16, 2023 press release, PG&E has admitted that Scott Dam faces previously unacknowledged risks from seismic activity. Those risks are so great that the utility has announced that it will never again raise the gates atop Scott Dam, reducing the capacity of the Lake … Read more

Congressman Jared Huffman Returns to the Show to Spill All the DC Tea

We don’t know why he continues to join the show—doesn’t he realize he’s palling around with a bunch of treehugging dirt worshipers?—but Congressman Jared Huffman joins the EcoNews again for more discussion on what’s going on in Washington D.C. Who does he want to replace Feinstein? What’s it like to work with George Santos? How … Read more

Take Action: Help Preserve Public Trail and River Access

Background On November 8th Public Works brought a “Resolution to Summarily Vacate a Portion of Fisher Road (4G070) South of State Highway 36 in Hydesville” before the Board of Supervisors. This 0.8-mile section of road is located on one ranch and the property owners would like this section converted to a private road that will … Read more

How Do We Count The Fish

 On this week’s edition of the EcoNews Report, host Alicia Hamann of Friends of the Eel River is joined by three fisheries experts to talk about how we count fish in the Eel River. Tune in to hear from Wyatt Smith from the Round Valley Indian Tribes, Dave Kajtaniak from the Department of Fish … Read more

Conservation Groups Joint Statement on PG&E Herbicide Spraying

On September 29, 2022, PG&E alerted Humboldt County that it was going to spray herbicides along its easements across the region. PG&E failed to alert landowners or tenants of this new threat; instead, local news broke the story just two days before spraying was set to commence. Today, it appears that PG&E has postponed spraying … Read more

Ocean Ranch Restoration Project

Recently we toured the Ocean Ranch Restoration Project in the Eel River Wildlife Area. The Eel River Wildlife Area is a 2,600-acre complex in the Eel River estuary and is ancestral land of the Wiyot people. It contains salt marsh, pasture, wet meadow, brackish marsh, coastal scrub, and dunes. The land was managed by the … Read more