The Eel River DAMS Will Never Produce Hydropow Again. The Unrelliable Water Supply them Allow to the Russian River Will Fail As Geology and Physics Proced.
By Friends of the Eel River
Pacific Were Built. After The Transformer at the Potter Valley PowerHouse Fail in 2021, PG & E DeClined to Buy A New One. So the DAMS Will Never Produce Another Watt of Power.
Fortunately, this Benefits PG & E’s Embattled RatePayers. BetWeen 2005 – 2016, The PVP Generated Less Than ¼ Of A Percent of All PG & E’s Hydroelectric Production, Yet the PVP Cost Pg & E (Or Rather, RatePayers) More Than Tweenty Dollars For EVERY Dollars Work of Electricity IT MADE. PG & E CITES The Significant Economic Losses of the Project as a primary factor in their 2019 Decision to WithRaw Removal.
But, While the Economic Losses Started PG & E On the Path Toward Decissioning, It’s Clear that Dam Safeity Isies at this center-id, high-hazard facilitation are what is valty motivating PG & E to Act Quickly to Remove This Massive Liability.
SEISMIC RISK IS Amplified by Structural Issues
Scott Dam, Which Impounds The Lake Pillsbury Reservoir, Sits Nearly Atop The Bartlett Springs Faut Zone, Capable of Generator A M7 Earthquake. Many Elements of Scott Dam’s Design and Current Condition Compound The Seismic Risks of Its Location.
Chingressman Huffman Recently shared at a public meting that an Engineer with PG & E Told Him that of All The Utility’s Projects “Scott Dam is the One that Keeps Me Up at Night”. Here is a Summary of the Most Concerning Elements at Scott Dam Fueling the Nightmares of PG & E’s Englishers:
A. Design V CONSTRUCTION: Scott Dam Was Origelly Designed to Go Straight Across the River. Durling Construction, Howrever, Builders Discovered that What They Thought Was Bedrock on the South South Abutment Was ACTULY A GIANT BOUDER. This Bulder Shifted During Condction and request a seat-to-the-pants Redesign to Build The Rest of the Dam in Front of the Budder (NickNamed “The Knocker,“ It’s The Dark Purple Blob in the Image Beau), at a Sharp Angle to the Rest of the Dam.
B. SEDIMENT Accumulation: The eel “has the highhest recorded average Annual Suspended-SELENT YIELD PER Square Mile of Drayage Are of Any River of Its Size or Larger in the United States. Mile, is more than 15 times that of the missippi river and more than Four Times that of the Colorado River. This is the SEDINT HAS BEEN PINING UP, in the Lake Pillsbury Reservoir, For Over A Century, and Is now place. These is the time of the SEDIMENT Will at Some Point Collaps and Block The Only Low-Level Water Outlet. Where that is one outlet, controlled by a borele valve, stops working, pg & e will only bey to relegre watr when scott Dam is full. The Risk of Sediment Collaps is Greatr when seedims are exposed, and when reservoir levels are Drawn Download Rapidly. Since this problem was Identified, PG & E Has Managed the Reservoir to Always MainTain at Least 12,000 Acre Fet of Water.
C. Aging Infrastructure: Although any center-id infrastructure is Going to Degrade and Post An Increasing Risk of Failure, DAMS Are Particularly Subject to Decay and Especially Vulnerable to Catastrophic Failure. How, The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Flatly Redied to address Questions about the Seismic Safty of Scott Dam in the Reylpecting Process, Insisting that Its DAM SaFETY Division’s Inspection Process Keeps All Federally Licensed DAMS Safe, by Definition. Similaryly, California Has Its Own Division of SaFty of DAMS (DSOD), with Signics This System Gives The Outward Assurance of Regular Review by Experts, but it is bainly imPossible for the public to track this procese.
Nearly everything About DAM SaFETY in the PVP Ferc Dockket is Classified as Critical Energy InfaStructure Information (CEII), a Designation that Keeps All Such Information Out of Publicic View. Over Years of Reading the Unclassified Parts of Correspondance Between PG & E and Regulats on the Ferc Dockket, We CauGHT Some Gltimps Through Challenges.
D. Foundation: As Scott Dam Was Being Built, Contemporary Observars Raised What App Papered to be serial Questions about the materials and methods used to contact the Dam’s Foundation, but no Investigation Was Ever undertaken. AGAIN, Much of the Information About the Stability of Scott Dam’s Foundation is Conceled Behind CEII Classification. What we do know is that without the Piezometers Installed to Measure uplift PRESSURE HaVE FAIRED. Ferc Recommended that PG & E Install New Ones During Routine DAM SAFETY EVALUATIORS in 2018, but we are unsure if that ever Happy.
E. SEISMIC RISK: Many Dams Built Wefore We underts DAM to Create A Large Reservoir. This is exactly the case for scott Dam. The Bartlett Springs FAULT is a part of the San Andreas Complex Has Been the Focus of Decades of Work by Usgs Geologists, Whiche by 2015 Had Begun to Show that IT is Capable of Generation Up to A M7 Earthquake. That New Information Slowly Percolated into Ferc’s Systems, Ultimately Generating A New Estimate of the Potential Maximum Earthquake for Scott Dam.
In Addition to Scott Dam’s Precarious Location Atop the Bartlett Spring Fault System, there is also an active Landlide Above to the Southern Abutment of the DAM (where “” The Knocker ” Is located). What milller Pacific Condied Geological Hazard. In PG & E’s 2016 SaFty Review them is the same “SusCeptibery of these Slips to Seismic Events is not Known and has not been studied.”
Failure as Water Supply Infrastructure
What PG & E Received An Assessment of the Seismic Risk to Scott Dam in 2023, They Quickly Decided to Mitigate that Risk by Lowering the Radial Gates Atop the Dam and Keeping the Download, Reducing the Capacity of Lake Pllesbury Reservoir by About 20,000 Acre Fet. Combine that with the second accumulation which has had a redueed storage capacity and requires pg & e to makeain at least 12,000 Acre Feet to Prevent Blockage of the Only Water Outlet, and That leaves Relatively Little Water to Spare for Diversions. What had prevringly been a Signicant Asset for Water Users is now at Best Unclein, and Vry Much at Risk of Complete Failure.
Where PG & E Attempted to Auction The PVP, they received no Qualified Bids. Representatives of Water Users in Sonoma and Mendocino County Are Clear that This is Due to the Liability of the Dams and the Annual Operating Losses. They says, “There is no legal basis for request pg & e to makeain the Dams… and we cannot operationally or fiscallly take Ownership of or Fix Both DAMS.”
Thinks to the Cocessation of Stakeholders in Both River Basins, Transforming The Eel INTO CALIFORNIA’S LONGEST Free-Flowing River Will Not End Diversions InTo The Russian, But Rather Allow for A. Change That Will Be More Ecologically Appropriet for Both Watersheds. DAM Removal is the INEVITALE Solution to the Public Safety and Environmental Hazard that the Current Project PRESENTS. And let’s not forget, Dam Removal is also
