Federal Government Tries to Force PG&E to Maintain Defunct Dams for Irrigation
On December 19, 2025, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the federal government’s effort to stop the proposed decommissioning of the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project in California. This project, owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), consists of two dams and a diversion tunnel that channels water from the Eel River Valley to the Russian River basin, where the water is used to irrigate 307,000 acres of farmland.
“If this plan goes through as proposed, it will devastate hundreds of family farms and wipe out more than a century of agricultural tradition in Potter Valley,” Rollins said in her press release. “Under California’s radical leadership, the needs of hardworking families are being ignored while the needs of fish are treated as more important.”
The way Rollins frames it, this looks like a classic environmentalist versus farmer battle. But—as is often the case in such simplistic narratives—the reality is a lot more complicated.
First of all, it wasn’t “California’s radical leadership” that submitted the proposal to demolish the dams. It was PG&E, which was spending $20 to produce every dollar’s worth of electricity sold from the project—until the transformer broke in 2021. The 9.4 MW-capacity power plant has not produced a single watt of electricity since.
Aside from the economic issues, PG&E cited several other reasons for decommissioning the project. One one of the impoundments, Scott Dam, is right on top of a fault that could generate a magnitude 7 earthquake, which could cause catastrophic flooding downstream. Removing the dams and restoring the natural flow of the river will also restore salmon spawning habitat for the first time in a century, a goal that Friends of the Eel River has been working towards for years.
Actually, the proposed dam removal project wouldn’t even cut off all of the water diversion to the Russian River. A group of stakeholders already worked together, back in 2023, to form the Eel-Russian Project Authority, which would still allow water diversion through the tunnel during periods of peak flow. However, farmers aren’t happy with this plan because the amount of water diverted would be smaller and not available year-round.
As is often the case, the supposed conflict between environmentalists and farmers disappears under closer scrutiny. The real issue here is that PG&E has, in effect, been subsidizing irrigation water for the farms in Mendocino County. Over a century, farmers have become dependent on a water distribution system that they could never afford to maintain themselves.
It’s not a question of “fish versus farmers.” It’s a question of whether a private electric utility company should be required to lose money maintaining a defunct power project to supply cheap water for farmers. And that’s a different issue altogether.
