A Free Flowing Future for the Eel River Within Reach

Friends of the Eel River is proud to play an influential role in advancing real solutions for Eel River watershed health and fisheries recovery, and we are grateful for your support and partnership. These are pivotal – and exciting – times for ensuring a more sustainable future for our region, and we take our obligation … Read more

Cape Horn Dam Fish Ladder is Inadequate

Cape Horn fish ladder clogged with gravel and debris after high flows.

Amidst the tumultuous relicensing, auction, bankruptcy, and withdrawal developments for the Eel River dams, attention has largely centered around the most problematic of the two – Scott Dam, which is structurally unsound and has zero fish passage. However, while there is a fish ladder at the Van Arsdale Fish Station at Cape Horn Dam, recent … Read more

109-year-old Potter Valley Project the Controversial Link Between Russian and Eel Rivers

About 80 feet behind the PG&E hydropower plant in Potter Valley, gray-green silt-laden water from the Eel River passes through a steel gate and is invisibly transformed. It has become part of the Russian River, which provides water for more than 600,000 people from Redwood Valley to northern Marin County. “Once it passes the gate, … Read more