If you haven’t heard any of your neighbors talking about the Potter Valley Project up in Humboldt County yet, that may soon change — especially in the Geyserville-Cloverdale area, sometimes called “Healdsburg North,” where the fiercely independent ag ethos is strong and distrust of big government is baked into local culture. Cloverdale Mayor Todd Lands has been trying to warn everybody about this project for a while now, and his fervent opposition to the current plan finally seems to be catching on.
Mayor Lands hosted a lively town hall on March 20 that drew at least 200 people, by my count. Cloverdale’s local veterans building was packed to the gills that Thursday night — to the point of standing-room-only — with community members worried about their future water supply and angry about the Potter Valley plan signed last month by reps from seven different entities with competing interests. (Including state agencies, county governments, tribes and other orgs.)
And while multiple speakers at the Cloverdale event insisted this issue isn’t political, it does feel poised to become the next polarizing local battle between groups with different outlooks, to put it gently.
Before we continue, let me explain what the Potter Valley Project even is! Basically, it’s an old PG&E power plant with two dams along the Eel River — one that PG&E officials have been trying to get rid of for years now, as they claim it’s costing more money than it generates. The complication: This same river apparatus currently diverts waters from the Eel into the Russian River and the Lake Mendocino reservoir — a lifeline for the more than half a million people living downstream in Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties who use this water to survive.
This system has been in place for more than a century, and has been a fundamental building block for the society and industry we enjoy today. Here’s more info from the Sonoma Water agency about how the system works.
You might remember that back on Feb. 13, the day before Valentine’s, a coalition of seven orgs and agencies reached what they called a “historic pact” determining the project’s future. They called it the “two-basin solution” — a compromise that allows the Round Valley Indian Tribes, who live nearby, to a) tear out the dams, 2) build a much more low-key diversion system that still sends some water to the Russian during wet months when Eel waters are high, but likely not as much overall, and 3) get paid by downstream agencies for the water they do send, which will fund this new system and ongoing environmental restoration efforts.
No one was more thrilled by the pact than Lynda Hopkins, chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, whose district includes the Lower Russian River Area and the Sonoma coast. After the pact was signed, she gushed in her regular newsletter to constituents: “It’s not every day that you get to take part in a historic moment. Last Thursday was one of those days where I had to pinch myself and ask, is this real life? Is this really my day job? … It felt like the arc of the universe bent a little bit more towards justice on that day.” She also told the Press Democrat: “This is truly unprecedented because everyone who is part of it has different interests.”
Supervisor Hopkins’ sentiments seem to exist in a universe entirely separate from the majority of those expressed at the recent Cloverdale town hall. Let’s just say it was a very different crowd, and a very different vibe, than the pact-signing ceremony. Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, who reps north county, and David Manning, manager of Sonoma Water’s environmental resources arm, had the guts to show up and try to defend the plan, which their agencies helped formulate. All eight of the other panelists — including Mendocino County Supervisor Madeline Cline, the head of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and more — were full of indignation about the deal, as were most attendees. They framed it as a fundamental threat to their ability to live and thrive in this area, and uphold multigenerational communities formed on the drip of waters from the Russian River and Lake Mendocino.
Things got especially ugly during public comment, when a few different gadflies started hurling personal insults at Gore; he eventually lost his cool and hurled some back. The Press Democrat documented one especially tense moment:
“What would your dad do if they tried to shut his vineyard water off?” Andy Springer asked Gore, whose family has long been in the wine business in Alexander Valley. Springer once ran against Gore for Fourth District supervisor.
“He’d tell you to shut up,” a frustrated Gore replied. “Don’t you talk about my dad.”
At this point, it’s unclear to me how much water we’ll actually lose from the plan on the table — and it seemed unclear to most people at the town hall, too. When I spoke to David Manning from Sonoma Water afterward, he showed me some graphs and argued the amount of water we’ll get from the Round Valley Indians under the new deal won’t be much different than the increasingly smaller trickle of Eel River waters we’ve already been getting the past few years. Still, it seems like things could get pretty dire — aka, bone dry — in future drought years. But that might already be the case, regardless of how the Potter Valley plan progresses. (Which is also why Sonoma Water and other local governments have been looking into alternate local water sources and storage solutions, beyond the status quo. All very up in the air!)
The vague and confusing nature of the Potter Valley plan only fanned the flames at Cloverdale’s town hall. Emotions were high, and ideologies flew around the room like spears. Sonoma County’s larger ag community, including farmers and politicians from way down in Petaluma, showed up ready to fight their next big battle, after winning the Measure J factory-farm battle and losing the Point Reyes elk battle. Indeed, any mention of preserving fish habitats drew sporadic scoffs from the crowd.
Amid the chaos, though, one argument against the current plan stood out to me as crystal clear: Wildfire-plagued Lake County is poised to lose Lake Pillsbury, leaving them without a critical water source to fight nearby fires. Cloverdale’s fire chief, too, is worried about any outcome that leaves us with less water to fight fires here in Sonoma County. Here’s an excerpt from SF Gate’s story on the town hall (bonus points if you can spot me in the lead image):
Lake County Supervisors Eddie Crandell and Bruno Sabatier voiced their constituents’ concerns about the potential draining of Lake Pillsbury, a man-made reservoir created by Scott Dam in Lake County. If the dam is decommissioned, the reservoir is expected to be nearly emptied. The Lake County Board of Supervisors recently appealed to the Trump administration to intervene in the decommissioning, citing an executive order focused on maximizing California’s water storage.
Crandell, who represents the district including Lake Pillsbury and who is a member of the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, called out what he saw as a misleading narrative around tribal collaboration. While the Round Valley Indian Tribes have signed onto the New Eel-Russian Diversion Facility, Crandell argued that other tribes along the Russian River are being ignored. “They’re only talking about the Round Valley Indian Tribes who are on the Eel side,” he said, adding that numerous other regional tribal interests have been “marginalized.” …
Cloverdale Fire Chief Jason Jenkins condemned the proposed water plan as a serious threat to public safety, recalling his deployment to help fight Los Angeles’ devastating Palisades Fire. “Water was the issue,” he said, emphasizing that the lack of available water for responders had allowed the fire to keep burning. He warned that a depleted Russian River could create similar conditions and did not mince words: “Every fire chief in California will be saying the same thing. This is not a plan that protects our community,” adding that it isn’t “just short-sighted. It’s dangerous.”
You can read alternate takes on the meeting in the Press Democrat and the conservative Unwon newsletter. Or if you want to see what your neighbors are saying, there are community threads running on Facebook Groups and Nextdoor. While the deal with the Round Valley Indian Tribes was already signed, there’s still some time before anything actually happens with the Potter Valley Project — PG&E has said the dams won’t come out until at least 2028 — so the deal’s detractors are hoping that enough public outcry could change the course of the project. Next up, PG&E will submit its final decommissioning plan on July 29.
Note from Simone: This piece originally appeared in the weekly email newsletter I write for the Bohemian, called Wine Country Today. Subscribe here!
