By Devon Boer, Mendocino County Farm Bureau
In Mendocino County, water continues to be the main issue of focus for our Farm Bureau staff and leadership. Our county has several significant watersheds within its 3,500 square miles. But the Russian River stands out as a focus for urgent attention.
Most of the inland area of our county, from Potter Valley to Hopland, depends on Russian River water. The river supplies a significant portion of our production farmland. As a result, Mendocino County Farm Bureau is active—and at the table—when it comes to Russian River issues.
The future of the Potter Valley Project—and the critical water supply it provides to the river—is a key focus of concern.
The Potter Valley Project started operation in 1908 as an inter-basin transfer of water from the Upper Main Eel River into the East Fork of the Russian River to create hydropower for the city of Ukiah. In 1922, to provide a year-round water supply for hydropower, Scott Dam was built to form Lake Pillsbury. The project was purchased by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. in 1930 and has been licensed for power production by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
For the past 100-plus years, the project has produced clean power. It has also delivered water to the Russian River. This has allowed communities and agriculture to flourish in Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties.
But in January 2019, PG&E decided to cease the FERC relicensing process for the Potter Valley Project that started in 2017. The project became orphaned. Other interest groups attempted to intervene and take over the licensing process but didn’t succeed.
As a result, the license expired in April; PG&E remains the owner and operator of the project under an annual license. But the utility plans to surrender its license and submit a decommissioning plan to FERC by January 2025. As a result, the clock is ticking for Russian River water users to work in a coordinated effort to determine the best way forward for securing a water supply through anticipated negotiations in the license-surrender process.
Since 1958, with the construction of Lake Mendocino, the Potter Valley Project has provided most of the water supply that is stored for downstream uses. According to modeling from the water agency Sonoma Water, there will not be enough water in Lake Mendocino to meet the needs of all current Russian River water users in eight out of 10 years.
For two of those low-water years, the modeling forecasts a 30,000-acre-foot shortage of water provided to the Russian River. Meanwhile, Lake Mendocino is expected to go dry.
These numbers aren’t surprising, given observations over the past several years. Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on the bottom of Lake Mendocino in April 2021 to declare one of many drought emergencies. The 2022 water year started off better, but the bottom of the lake was soon visible once again.
Since July 2021, a transformer failure at the project has prevented PG&E from diverting normal flows into the Russian River. Replacement is underway but won’t be completed until 2023 or 2024.
In May 2022, PG&E submitted a flow variance request for the project to preserve the cold-water pool in Lake Pillsbury for fishery needs. The variance was approved by FERC on July 27, which further reduced the flow diverted into the Russian River.
As a result, Mother Nature will have to bring some significant precipitation in the coming months to increase the storage at Lake Pillsbury above the 36,000-acre-foot threshold to terminate the flow reductions.
The reduced flows from the Potter Valley Project also brought implications for a creative water-rights program, on which Russian River interests have engaged with the California State Water Resources Control Board for the past two years. In July, that process led to the implementation of the Russian River Voluntary Water Sharing Agreement to help many farmers maintain irrigation supplies.
However, the reduced water supply into the Russian River due to the variance for PG&E and Lake Pillsbury doesn’t allow for operation of the new water-sharing agreement. It was suspended in August, pending improvement of water-supply conditions.
The water picture so far hasn’t gotten any brighter, and most Russian River water-rights holders have once again seen their water supplies curtailed.
As a result, the Russian River situation remains complex and challenging. The Mendocino County Farm Bureau will continue to be engaged on this front—and on all things water. We will continue working to preserve our water supplies and our agricultural heritage and economy, so that Mendocino will still be farming for the next 100-plus years.
