USDA pushes to stop Potter Valley dam removal

A failing Northern California dam slated for removal has become a flashpoint. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has intervened to derail a deal that would restore the Eel River—sparking accusations of culture-war politics, a lawsuit threat from

The Potter Valley Project isn’t quietly dying. It’s clogging with sediment, often going dry during drought, and hasn’t generated power for years. Its hydroelectric plant once produced about 9 megawatts—roughly 1 percent of a typical fossil-fuel-fired plant—but today the bigger concern is what might happen when the ground moves. Some of its infrastructure may be at risk of collapsing during an earthquake.

Yet for the utility that owns it, Pacific Gas and Electric has been trying for years to move on. Last year, PG&E moved to demolish the dams and undam the Eel River. The path to a final removal agreement wasn’t quick. A removal agreement required years of careful negotiation—partly because the project doesn’t just sit on paper. The dam supplies water to vineyards and cities in Sonoma County. and it’s the sole water source for the rural farm community of Potter Valley.

The agreement that followed was a compromise built around water rights and harm reduction. The Round Valley Indian Tribe—whose rights to Eel River water are senior—agreed to let some water flow from the river to farmers through a diversion tunnel. In return. farmers agreed to accept about half the water they had received in past years when the reservoir was full.

Supporters of removal say this shift would restore natural river flow for vulnerable fish that have long inhabited the Eel River.

But now U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins appears determined to blow up the deal.

Rollins—described in the region as a longtime ally of President Trump—has joined local residents in a public campaign against the agreement. She has also identified an obscure Southern California water agency as a possible route to taking control of the dams.

Her intervention is landing in a climate where dam removal decisions have often depended on painstaking cooperation—and where, supporters say, that cooperation is being turned into spectacle.

U.S. Representative Jared Huffman, a Democrat who represents the area in Congress, reacted to Rollins’s actions with disbelief. “It’s not really even the federal government [opposing the agreement]. It’s a couple of MAGA extremists who happen to be government actors,” Huffman said. “It’s sort of political theater masked as some sort of policy move that purports to be about taking over and operating this project. which is pretty preposterous.”.

Rollins’s opponents argue her approach reflects a broader pattern: turning environmental programs into culture-war messaging. Under her leadership, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has targeted federal funding for sustainable farming practices and programs that broaden farmers’ access to USDA support—terminating billions of dollars worth of grants on the grounds that such initiatives are what Rollins has called “woke” holdovers from the Biden administration.

Supporters of dam removal say that makes the Potter Valley dispute feel less like technical water policy and more like power politics.

What’s at stake is immediate and local. Without an agreement, supporters say, the Eel River and its surrounding environment will likely keep deteriorating. The Round Valley tribe could sue to claim its senior rights over the river’s water. opening up prolonged litigation that could jeopardize water availability for nearby farms and cities. Water deliveries from the degraded reservoir would likely remain meager.

Rollins’s critics also point to a wider picture: the Potter Valley conflict threatens a recent trend of negotiation and compromise in vulnerable watersheds across the country. Agreements to remove dams have happened in places such as the Juniata River in Pennsylvania and the massive Klamath River dam removal on the California-Oregon border. Those bipartisan deals. supporters say. have been fragile even in the best of times; by politicizing the issue. Rollins may have made compromise harder to sustain.

In Potter Valley itself. the loudest opposition to the removal plan comes from residents who say the community is being sold a solution that won’t come. One of the most vocal is Rich Brazil. a ranch-animal veterinarian who lives just south of the main project dam in the small town of Potter Valley. His daughter. Keely Brazil Covello. is a filmmaker who writes a blog called America Unwon that advocates for farmers and ranchers.

Covello’s blog—ranked 44th on Substack’s “Climate & Environment” leaderboard—has publicized the perceived downsides of the deal and framed it as an existential threat to Potter Valley. “This will change the face of that area. ” Covello said. adding. “People need to know what’s happening.” Covello now lives in Southern California.

After PG&E secured the dam removal agreement, Covello began writing frequently about it. In early September. Rollins retweeted one of Covello’s posts about Potter Valley with the caption. “I’m on it.” Later that month. Covello and her father helped organize a letter addressed to Rollins and seven other leaders in the Trump administration urging the officials to reject the agreement as “inadequate. noncompliant with federal law. and dismissive of community and environmental consequences.”.

Rollins and Covello then engaged in what appeared to be coordinated messaging about the dam removal effort. In the following months, Rollins held meetings with Covello, Rich Brazil, and other local dam removal opponents. She also posted to social media about how the state legislature and Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom are putting “fish over people”—a common California attack line used against environmental activists.

In December, Rollins published a letter to the editor in a local newspaper, The Mendocino Voice, condemning the dam removal effort for its threat to farmers and ranchers in the region.

That same month. the agriculture secretary filed a notice to intervene in the project proceedings and submitted comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. the nation’s independent dam regulator. requesting that FERC suspend PG&E’s formal request to surrender its license for the dams. In a statement. Rollins said: “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.” She added: “This plan would put countless USDA investments at risk and leave families even more vulnerable to drought and wildfire.”.

Multiple current and former USDA staffers and officials told Grist that the USDA’s arguments in its request to FERC appear to omit the conservation and environmental priorities of the agency’s mission areas. In its request. USDA argued that dam decommissioning would cause adverse impacts across five of the USDA’s subagencies. including the U.S. Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS.

Erin Foster West—now executive programs director at the National Young Farmers Coalition—said the NRCS and Forest Service have historically managed and supported very small dams, but that the Potter Valley Project appears to have no obvious connection to USDA operations.

Gloria Montaño Greene. who served as deputy undersecretary of the USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation mission area during the Biden administration and was involved with the Klamath Dam removal. said the processes that produce those kinds of outcomes unfold differently than what she described as the administration’s current approach. She said they typically move slowly across multiple administrations with a wide range of stakeholders at the table.

“What’s the NRCS saying? What’s the state of California saying? What are the tribal leads for the area saying? There are many voices in the conversation,” Greene said.

Those voices, Rollins’s critics say, have been hard to see.

Covello, Brazil, and other dam removal opponents met with USDA officials in January at the Farm Bureau convention in Anaheim, and later in Washington, D.C. Then, in late April, Rollins announced that an entity had emerged to buy the dams from PG&E: the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District.

Elsinore Valley is a water service provider about 500 miles away in Riverside County. A member of the Elsinore Valley board appeared on Covello’s podcast and declared her ambition to take over the dams, framing it as an altruistic gesture that would protect water supply for all Californians.

“All of California benefits when there’s water and all of California is harmed when there’s not. ” Burke said when asked why she wanted to acquire the project. She admitted that “there might be no benefit” to her district and said that “we are just interested and doing our due diligence.” Burke said she first learned about the dam removal deal when she read an X post from Chad Bianco. the Riverside County sheriff who is running for governor as a Republican.

Policymakers and environmentalists blasted Elsinore Valley’s involvement. They described it as. at best. a political stunt and at worst a plan to siphon water from Northern California and deliver it farther south. There is no infrastructure that could convey water from Potter Valley down to Elsinore Valley. making a direct transfer physically impossible—but critics say that hasn’t calmed suspicions.

Huffman’s office has begun a formal investigation into Elsinore’s involvement.

Alicia Hamann, executive director of the environmental advocacy organization Friends of the Eel River, said the situation feels odd. “The involvement of this water district. nearly 600 miles away from the project. with no tangible connection to the power or the water associated with the project. is really bizarre. ” Hamann said. She suspects the administration could be using the case to appeal to farmers ahead of November’s midterm elections.

In response to inquiries from Grist, a USDA spokesperson reiterated Rollins’s position. The spokesperson said dam removal “is expected to create severe. lasting consequences for the region’s agricultural producers and surrounding communities.” The spokesperson added that removing the dams would harm water quality and compromise drinking water supplies. reduce firefighting capacity. and put groundwater wells at risk. while jeopardizing substantial USDA investments tied to loans. insurance programs. conservation work. and rural development.

The spokesperson also pointed to other “unresolved issues” but did not clarify them.

Even so, no one seems certain what comes next. PG&E’s proposal to decommission the dams is still pending before FERC. Neither USDA nor Elsinore Valley has submitted a formal proposal to take over the dams.

In the meantime, legal conflict has started to replace negotiation. Friends of the Eel River and other environmental organizations submitted a public records request to Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District on May 5. The request. shared with Grist. cites concerns that the decision to explore purchasing the dams violates the Brown Act. a California law requiring local legislative bodies to conduct their business in public.

Elsinore Valley appears to be pushing back. That same week. the water district and the America First Policy Institute—a conservative think tank cofounded by Rollins herself in 2021—began filing public records requests to organizations involved in dam removal talks. Some requests targeted governmental agencies required to respond; others went to private sector actors typically not subject to the law. including the conservation nonprofit CalTrout.

A request to CalTrout sought all electronic communications concerning the Potter Valley Project; all records. internal documents. and funding applications; and all communications shared with a variety of related entities and agencies. Charlie Schneider, a project lead at the nonprofit, said, “We are not a public agency. So we were really confused we got it,” adding, “What are they even after is hard to understand, right?”.

Shortly afterward, the America First Policy Institute rescinded its request. The institute declined to respond to a request for comment, directing Grist instead to its public comment submitted to FERC opposing dam removal.

At the center of the water-rights tension is the Round Valley Indian Tribe. which holds senior rights to Eel River water. Those rights mean it could. in theory. assert a claim to the water farmers and cities currently use from the Potter Valley Project. The tribe has long pushed for dam removal, and the PG&E agreement was possible thanks to their cooperation.

Under the agreement, the tribe will allow farmers who got water from the dams to receive some of their Eel River water through a new diversion tunnel. In exchange, farmers will give the tribe money for ecosystem restoration.

In an interview with Grist. tribal president Joseph Parker vowed to claim the tribe’s water rights if USDA continued to block the removal deal. Parker said that would mean a lengthy adjudication of the Eel River’s water rights. which could block Elsinore or any farmers downstream from taking water from the dams even if they did remain.

“We talked to USDA, we told them our story, and they listened, but you could tell they didn’t want to listen,” Parker said. He added: “[The farmers] have been getting free water this whole hundred-plus years. Hopefully they know that we aren’t backing down and that we’re here for the long fight.”

Parker said the tribe has addressed letters to both Rollins and Elsinore warning them about “the potential liabilities that any successor owner of these dams will likely face, and the resolve of our people to oppose their retention.”

Supporters of the agreement say there’s no alternative once PG&E decided to offload the project. Janet Pauli. a grape and hay farmer and one of Potter Valley’s largest landowners. heads the irrigation district representing most of the area’s farmers. Pauli helped secure the 2025 agreement in exchange for water diversion that would supply farms and cities downstream from Potter Valley during the winter.

Pauli said if someone had asked her ten years ago what would happen if the project was gone, she would have said it would be disastrous. “But that was then, and this is now,” she said.

She also argued opponents haven’t pushed for the kinds of replacement projects that would make the transition less damaging—suggesting mitigation could include expanding a nearby dam on the Russian River and building other water storage projects in the valley.

Covello and other opponents dispute that. They argue replacement projects won’t be built, and winter diversions won’t materialize. Covello said she has also heard from tribal members and from PG&E employees that dam removal will deliver far fewer benefits than proponents claim.

“It’s not gonna happen, and it’s not gonna work,” Covello said. “What we have works right now, and California can’t build anything to save its life.”

PG&E said it tried multiple times to find a buyer and is moving forward with decommissioning. In a spokesperson statement. the utility said there is “misinformation” about PG&E’s role and the availability of alternatives to dam removal. The spokesperson said: “There is a significant difference between an entity inquiring about the Potter Valley Project and actually submitting a proposal to acquire the project. ” describing Elsinore Valley’s overtures.

Keeping the dams, even if Elsinore acquires them, would be difficult. By most accounts, the Potter Valley Project is in poor condition. The hydroelectric power house broke down in 2021. The diversion tunnel sits on a seismic fault zone capable of triggering a major earthquake. The dams are also out of compliance with federal environmental laws around fish passage and water quality. Upgrading them would take hundreds of millions of dollars.

FERC, meanwhile, appears to be moving forward with license surrender and decommissioning unless a viable alternative appears. On May 22, FERC kicked off its environmental assessment by releasing its first National Environmental Policy Act scoping document. The document called dam retention “infeasible” due to seismic stability concerns. fruitless past efforts to find an operator. and PG&E’s preferred alternative to remove the structure.

CalTrout’s Schneider said, “FERC is saying, ‘There’s nothing else in front of us to assess,’” adding, “It’s certainly helpful [in] understanding where things are actually at.”

Even with people split across California’s familiar conservation debate—environmentalists urging water stay in rivers, farmers arguing it should be used—Schneider said he agrees with Pauli that dam removal is the best path forward for the community.

“For USDA, some funding support for those farmers … strikes me as a much better use of their time and energy than trying to save 100-year-old dams that are eventually going to fill with sediment,” he said.

Kyle Farmer, a farmer and rancher who lives in Potter Valley, described the conflict as more complicated than the fish-versus-people framing Rollins has adopted. Farmer once fought to preserve the dam but now says the challenge is making farmers and residents whole once the dams inevitably go down.

“It would be great if this was a fish-versus-farmer problem, because there is a lot of precedent on how to handle those,” Farmer said. “What we haven’t made much progress on is how to replace aging infrastructure. This is more like a town whose bridge is failing.”

For now, the bridge is still standing on paper. But with PG&E’s decommissioning request pending at FERC. Rollins’s intervention trying to stop it. and Elsinore Valley’s possible bid still unsubmitted. Potter Valley is left in a tense pause—waiting to learn whether compromise survives. or whether politics will make the transition far harder than any engineering problem alone.

Potter Valley Project Eel River dam removal Brooke Rollins USDA FERC PG&E Round Valley Indian Tribe Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District Brown Act fish passage drought water rights