Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...A member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet on Monday intensified her ongoing campaign to thwart PG&E’s plans to eventually tear down a pair of century-old Eel River dams.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced in a social media post that she and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had met earlier in the day with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. CEO Patti Poppe, along with representatives from the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District “to begin constructive negotiations on the future of the Potter Valley Project.”
RELATED: Southern California water agencies ramp up interest in Northern California’s Eel River dams
The administration’s “hope is clear,” she stated: to “keep the Scott and Cape Horn Dams in place and working for the communities they serve.”
That goal stands in direct opposition to PG&E’s long-held plan to decommission the century-old dams, part of Potter Valley hydroelectric project that no longer made financial sense, the utility concluded in 2019.
In July 2025, PG&E embarked on the federal process to take down the Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury in Lake County, and the smaller, downstream Cape Horn Dam in Mendocino County.
Six months earlier, in February 2025, a coalition of local governments, tribes and environmental groups from Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt counties had reached a solution designed to guided river management and Eel-Russian diversions once the dams are gone.
That project would free up the headwaters of California’s third-longest river for its ailing salmon and steelhead trout runs — while restoring long-slighted water rights for local tribes.
That plan, the painstakingly crafted “two-basin solution,” was brokered by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, a prominent critic of the Trump administration.
It has faced ardent opposition from farming interests, Lake County and communities including Lake Pillsbury and Cloverdale. Opponents believe the plan will not provide enough diverted Eel River water for the adjoining Russian River basin, especially during summer months.
The push to save the Eel River dams got an eleventh-hour lifeline this spring when representatives from a water agency in Riverside County expressed interest in taking over the Potter Valley Project. The move came amid PG&E’s application to decommission the dams, a request that sits with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees hydropower projects. Its final plan is due out next year.
Rollins, in December, requested to intervene in that process. With Monday’s announcement on X, Rollins sought to breathe more life into the possibility that the Scott and Cape Horn dams could be saved, under the auspices of a water district located 575 miles south.
“We want to protect the dams and support the many farmers that rely on this infrastructure,” she Tweeted.
Huffman, the ranking member of House Committee on Natural Resources, said Tuesday morning that he is “not terribly worried” that Rollins’ post signaled “a major change of course,” describing it as “an escalation” of the administration’s “intimidation tactics, and political theater.
“At the end of the day,” he said, Rollins and Burgum and the Elsinore Valley water district “have to work within the box of reality.
“It appears to me they have been woefully unaware of the most basic facts about this project, and the process that got us there.”
Huffman speculated that PG&E CEO Poppe’s role in the Washington D.C. meeting was to “educate them about how little hydropower this project generated when it was operational, how much money was being lost on it every single year, and the mountain of liability that would accrue to anyone stupid enough to try to purchase it.”
Nor was David Manning, executive director of the Eel Russian Project Authority, overly concerned by Rollins’ Tweet.
“We didn’t hear anything in the news released yesterday that would suggest PG&E is changing course,” he said. “We intend to continue pursuing the new Eel-Russian facility with our working partners – which include PG&E.”
In a statement provided by PG&E spokesperson Megan McFarland, the utility confirmed that Poppe had attended the meeting, to discuss the “current status” of the Potter Valley Project, “and what lies ahead.
Notably, the statement said “PG&E remains committed to working with our current partners as the decommissioning process continues.”
But it did not slam the door on possibly reversing course:
“PG&E has been and remains open to reviewing and considering any proposal, which has broad stakeholder alignment, from an entity or entities that have the technical and financial capability to own and operate the dams.”
News of the meeting sat poorly with the coalition of water agencies, counties, tribes, and conservation organizations behind the two-basin solution.
Charlie Schneider, a Mendocino County-based leader for California Trout, said in a statement that “the future of the Eel and Russian Rivers should be decided by the people who live along them and depend on them, not brokered in Washington between political appointees and outside interests.”
“The Two-Basin Solution was built here, by this community, across both watersheds,” he said in the statement. “It is the only plan that protects water supply stability for the Russian River while restoring the salmon runs that our northern California communities depend on.”
David Rabbitt, Sonoma County Supervisor and board chair of the Eel-Russian Project Authority — the entity created to construct and operate the future diversion facility — said that funding for some aspects of the New Eel-Russian Facility has been secured, “and we are proceeding.”
In an interview with The Press Democrat, Rabbitt underscored how difficult it would be for PG&E, this late in the game, after it has submitted its final “license surrender application” with FERC, to put that process in reverse.
“My understanding is that once you (go through) these processes, it’s kind of a one-way street,” he said.
“But you know, with the Trump administration, anything can happen — even things that aren’t supposed to happen and have never happened in the past.”
Joseph Parker, president of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, expressed concern with the Department of the Interior’s involvement in the D.C. meeting, according to the statement, noting that there are no Bureau of Reclamation facilities in the area. The department’s primary federal responsibility is its trust obligation to tribes, including the Round Valley Indian Tribes, he noted.
“Restoring the Eel is about healing our river and our community, and it was important to us to come to an agreement that supported our neighboring communities as well,” said Parker. “That is why we spent years at the table with our partners building the Two-Basin Solution, because we believe communities in both watersheds deserve a sustainable future. We are committed to that vision, and we will see it through.”
The Elsinore Valley water district, which announced the meeting on its website, said it is “in the early stages of due diligence, learning more about the Potter Valley Project, the communities it serves, its stakeholders and the condition of its infrastructure.
The district emphasized that “a determination has not been made about acquiring, owning, operating, financing or taking any other action related to the project.
“These conversations are part of the District’s due diligence.”
That review, it said, “includes legal, economic, public health, financial, environmental, operational, Tribal, agricultural, regional stakeholder and customer considerations.” Moving beyond that stage would require discussion and a vote by the district’s board of directors, the agency noted on its website.
It would also, Huffman pointed out, require a deeper, and more serious level of engagement from the Trump administration – one that transcended occasional posts on social media platforms.
“Right now,” he said, “that’s all we have. At the end of the day, we’ve got Tweets.”
You can reach Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @AusMurph88.