Residents of Potter Valley are confronting a difficult choice as they consider the future of farming in their home town: water that costs at least $200 acre feet a year or no water at all.
What’s more, the water available for purchase will come at an additional cost — the loss of a beloved recreational area around Lake Pillsbury, and the security of having a second reservoir in the event of a wildfire.
Their dilemma stems from the planned decommissioning of the Potter Valley Project and the removal of the Scott Dam, which forms Lake Pillsbury, and the Cape Horn Dam, which forms the Van Arsdale Reservoir.
“And we don’t feel good about, it we just don’t.” That’s one of the long-time residents of Potter Valley speaking Thursday night at a special meeting of the Board of Supervisors of Mendocino County and the Board of Directors of the Inland Water and Power Corporation.
The meeting detailed the complex legal and logistical steps now underway to secure a future water supply. The Inland Water and Power Corporation is a joint powers authority formed in 1996, It is working with the newly formed Eel-Russian Project Authority to build and operate a new diversion facility on the Eel River.
That facility — basically a pumping station — would deliver water to the East Fork Russian River under a lease agreement with the Round Valley Indian Tribes, which hold the senior rights to the water.
Scott Shapiro, legal counsel to the Inland Water and Power Corporation explains, that the Round Valley Indian tribe has what's known as an unquantified Winters claim. “And the Winters Doctrine says that when the federal government reserves land out of public ownership for a particular purpose, it is implied that that land comes with the water rights needed in order to operate that land for the reserved purpose,” Shapiro said. “And you notice the word reserved. Well, reservation is what the Indian tribe's land is. And so the Indian tribe, Round Valley in this case, can make a claim that it has a senior water right even to PG&E's right.”
Under state policy, PG&E is also required to offer its rights to the tribes before any other party. As a result, the Eel River Power Authority has agreed to lease the rights from the tribe for an initial 30-year term, with an option to renew for another 20 years.
Shapiro said that the deal includes a waiver of sovereign immunity allowing both sides to enforce the lease in court if necessary.
“So we have mechanisms of enforcing just as they have mechanisms enforcing against us. If we don't pay, if we divert the wrong amount, like any other lease, they can sue us. If they don't make water available to us, we can sue them.”
The pumping facility is expected to cost at least $40 million to build and $10 million a year to operate. If plans proceed as intended, it the construction phase will happen in 2030 — 2031.
In addition to diverting water from the Eel during the rainy season, the community will need somewhere to store that water during drier periods of year.
Local officials are exploring options for long-term water storage including doubling the storage capacity at Lake Mendocino by raising the Coyote Valley Dam. A feasibility study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to cost $6.5 million. So far, $1.3 million in funding has been secured. The actual project could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. According to an estimate dating back to the early 2000s, raising the dam could cost between $350 and $400 million dollars.
It’s unclear where this money will come from — the federal government? The state?
Before that question can be answered, there are interim costs for consulting, financing, ground water assessment and more. Some of these will need be borne, to some extent, by local taxpayers.
And so the water rights agreement with the Round Valley Indian Tribes is merely the first milestone.
Some residents fear the economic consequences will be severe.
“It’s going to cost the farmers around here,” one grower said. “There won’t be any more grapes growing here. They’re gone because they’re spending $200, $300 an acre-foot for water. You can’t make any money doing that.”
Rose Scahill, a longtime Potter Valley farmer, said the changes threaten her livelihood.
“I’ve raised my children being a self-sufficient farmer,” she said. “I’m looking at losing my way of life.”
Others worry about losing Lake Pillsbury — and the effect it could have on fire fighting efforts in that part of Lake County.
“The lake has created a whole new ecosystem not to mention all the the people that recreate there and the fire mitigation argument,” John Evans said he questions claims that the removal of Scott Dam will benefit the salmon. “The argument about the fish — it’s kind of like thinking that if you take the dam out, everything’s going to be like it was a hundred years ago.”
But Sky Laiwa, Evans’ business partner and a member of the Manchester Band of Pomo Indians, supports the dam’s removal.
“I am for the removal because it would allow the salmon to return to their nesting grounds and return a lot of the tribal lands back to the people,” she said.
Future Unclear
And so as state, tribal and local leaders move forward with the water deal, residents of Potter Valley are left weighing the high cost of staying on the land against the consequences of walking away.
