The Mendocino Voice ·

The downstate bid for Mendocino’s Potter Valley Project

By Roger Coryell

mendocino water

MENDOCINO CO., 5/15/26 — The Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District wants to buy the Potter Valley Project.

The district sits in Riverside County, more than 500 miles south of the Eel River. It has never run a hydroelectric dam. Its vice president, Darcy Burke, told a podcast in late April that her board considered the local plan to take Scott and Cape Horn dams down “criminal — their words, not mine,” she said. Its board president, Andy Morris, signed a letter to Congress last week saying the district has not made any decisions yet.

Rep. Jared Huffman, whose own district covers the Eel River basin, has been asking the same question many here are asking: why the interest from a Southern California utility in a far Northern California water project?

Three weeks ago Huffman sent demand letters to Morris and to two Trump cabinet secretaries who have been pushing the bid. Tuesday was his deadline for answers. Morris’ letter — surfaced to The Voice on Wednesday morning, four days after he signed it — is the only response so far, and it does not really answer the question.

So what is this really about?

Pumped storage is a way of using a dam as a battery. You build two reservoirs at different heights. When power is cheap — at night, or in the middle of a sunny afternoon when solar is flooding the grid — you pump water from the lower one to the higher one. When power is expensive, you let the water run back down through turbines and sell the electricity. The bigger the drop, the more power you can store.

Dave Steindorf works for American Whitewater, a national river-conservation group. He has worked the Potter Valley file for years. Hydropower is his beat. He looked at the Elsinore bid and asked the obvious question.

“Why would anyone buy a dam with significant seismic safety issues?” Steindorf said in an interview last week. “Not one pumped storage project has been constructed in the States for decades. The reality is that they just don’t pencil. Meanwhile, the amount of conventional battery storage that has been brought online is staggering.”

That is the question this story is about. The Potter Valley dams are not a normal asset to buy. One of them, Scott Dam, has known earthquake-safety problems. The federal hydropower license is being given up, not sold. The water itself belongs, under a federally approved local plan, to the Round Valley Indian Tribes and a coalition of Northern California agencies. The dams themselves are coming out.

Joseph Parker (center), president of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, signs a memorandum of understanding at the California Natural Resources headquarters in Sacramento, Calif., on Friday, Feb. 13, 2025. The agreement is intended to secure Russian River water supplies while returning Eel River water rights to the Round Valley Indian Tribes and supporting salmon restoration in the Eel River watershed. (Travis VanZant/California Department of Fish and Wildlife via Bay City News)

So what is Elsinore actually after?

Two possibilities sit on the table. Neither one is the story Elsinore’s vice president Burke has been telling her own ratepayers. Neither one is what Trump cabinet secretaries have been writing on Twitter. The letter Andy Morris sent Rep. Jared Huffman last week — released to The Voice on Wednesday morning — keeps both possibilities alive without picking either one.

What’s at Potter Valley, in plain terms?

PG&E owns two dams on the Eel River. Scott Dam holds back Lake Pillsbury. Cape Horn Dam, the smaller one downstream, holds back Van Arsdale Reservoir. A tunnel sends a portion of Eel River water through the mountain into the East Branch of the Russian River. That water then runs down to Lake Mendocino. The diversion has run since 1908. It is the reason there is summer water in the Russian River. That is the reason there is wine in this part of California.

Last summer, PG&E filed to give up its federal license to run the project. The powerhouse has not made electricity since 2021. Scott Dam has serious earthquake problems. PG&E does not want it anymore.

Seven Northern California parties spent years working out what comes next. Sonoma Water. The Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission. The Round Valley Indian Tribes. Humboldt County. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife. CalTrout. Trout Unlimited. The plan they built — federally accepted — takes the dams out and keeps a smaller seasonal diversion in place to protect the Russian River farms and towns that have come to depend on it. That is the plan Darcy Burke called “criminal.”

Enter Elsinore

On April 21, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on her official Twitter account that the Trump administration had found a buyer for Potter Valley: the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District. Two days later, on April 23, Burke went on a ranching-advocacy podcast called AmericaUnwon and explained her board’s posture. “When I brought this issue to my board,” she said, “they said this was criminal — their words, not mine — and that they were going to do what they could to figure out how we can make this work.”

(R-L) Brooke Rollins is sworn in as the United States secretary of agriculture by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Rollins controls the USDA’s voice in federal proceedings affecting farmers, ranchers, rural communities and the U.S. Forest Service interests. (United States Department of Agriculture via Bay City News)

She said her phones started ringing the day after Rollins’s tweet. “People like, ‘Do you need a partner? Do you need a partner? Do you need a partner?’” she told the podcast.

On the same podcast she went after PG&E. The utility’s account of why no buyer ever came forward in earlier years, she said, “might be a version of the truth — maybe not the actual truth.”

PG&E answered through its spokesman, Paul Moreno, in writing. The utility laid out a timeline. Stakeholder outreach starting in 2017. A nationwide call for offers in fall 2018, run by an industry broker. “No viable proposals” returned. A January 2019 notice to federal regulators that PG&E would not seek a new license. A March 2019 federal “orphan process” that drew no applicants. The July 2025 surrender filing. And then a new disclosure: “PG&E met with Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District in January 2026.”

At that January meeting, PG&E has said, the utility offered Elsinore a non-disclosure agreement and urged the district to talk to the local coalition that is actually doing the work. “At this time,” the utility added, “Elsinore has not reached out to PG&E to have further discussions or sign an NDA.”

Two utilities, on the record, saying the other side’s account is unreliable. That is the ground on which Rollins’ framing of Elsinore as “a legitimate buyer” has to stand. It is also the ground Rep. Jared Huffman set out to walk Washington through.

Huffman, the senior Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, sent demand letters on April 28 to three people: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins; Interior Secretary Doug Burgum; and Morris, the Elsinore board president.

A demand letter is what a member of Congress sends when he wants the executive branch to put something in writing. The Natural Resources Committee oversees the Interior and Agriculture departments. Both secretaries are subject to its inquiries.

Huffman has framed the bid as part of a larger play. Rollins, he has argued, is trying to federalize the Potter Valley Project — to pull it from PG&E’s surrender process into the Department of the Interior. She has brought Burgum into the effort. And she has named a Southern California buyer for PG&E’s water rights and infrastructure. The three moves together, Huffman has said, are cause for alarm.

FILE – U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, represents California’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, and Del Norte Counties. (U.S. House of Representatives via Bay City News)

He asked for everything. Any talks, plans, money, operations or impacts tied to a Potter Valley purchase. He also asked for any records connected to plans to “store, divert, transfer, sell, exchange, deliver or control” Eel River water for use outside the Eel and Russian River watersheds. The second part of the ask was broader than the first. It reached past the Elsinore bid to any policy that would move Eel water south.

In the press release announcing the letters, Huffman tied the Elsinore bid to the 1967 Dos Rios Dam plan — the federal plan to flood the Round Valley Indian Reservation and the town of Covelo. Public outcry killed that plan under Reagan. Huffman framed today’s bid as a direct heir.

What Riverside actually sent

By close of business Tuesday — Huffman’s deadline — none of the three recipients had publicly answered. Rollins and Burgum still have not.

Morris had answered. Privately. Four days early. The public did not see his letter until Elsinore’s public-information officer, Sylvia Ornelas, sent a copy to The Voice on Wednesday morning.

The letter says less than it seems.

It runs two pages. It says Elsinore is “in the early stages of its due diligence process” — the formal study a government body does before deciding whether to buy something. It says “no decisions have been made regarding acquisition, ownership, operations, financing, or any future use” connected to Potter Valley. It describes the district’s interest as a review of “water infrastructure and supply options that may provide broader benefits throughout California.”

That last phrase is doing the work. Water districts buying infrastructure for local use describe local use. “Broader benefits throughout California” is the language a district uses when the benefits of a deal are not local — when the prize is somewhere else.

The letter also acknowledged something Elsinore had never said before. Huffman’s request had two parts. The first was about the project itself — Scott Dam, Cape Horn Dam, the powerhouse, the water rights. The second was about plans to move Eel water out of the Eel and Russian River basins.

Morris told Huffman the district has records that match both parts. He did not say what those records are. He did not say how many. He told the congressman the district will start handing over the non-exempt ones by May 29, on a rolling basis after that. He reserved the right to keep back anything Elsinore decides is exempt under California’s public-records law.

A district that had not been thinking about moving Eel water south could have said so. Elsinore did not. It told Congress, in writing, that it has paperwork on the question. It asked for three more weeks before producing anything it is not calling exempt.

The letter does not mention electricity. The question this series has been asking Elsinore since April 27 — whether pumped-storage hydroelectricity is part of what the district is after — is not answered in the letter, and is not raised in it.

Why the pumped-storage question is not abstract

Lake Pillsbury sits at 1,818 feet. Van Arsdale Reservoir sits about 1,000 feet below it. That drop is in the same range as Castaic Lake — California’s biggest pumped-storage plant — and just below Bath County, Virginia, the biggest pumped-storage plant in the country. Lake Pillsbury holds about 80,000 acre-feet of usable water. Run that water through that drop, and the energy you could store works out to dozens of gigawatt-hours.

Water is released from Scott Dam, sending a powerful plume of white spray into the river below as water cascades down the concrete face of the dam under a clear blue sky.
FILE – Scott Dam in Lake County, Calif., on May 9, 1967. Located on the Eel River creating Pillsbury Lake which has a surface area of 2,000 acres and 65 miles of shoreline. (California Department of Water Resources via Bay City News)

That is a real asset. That is real money.

The 9.4 megawatts of generating capacity Burke keeps citing for Potter Valley is what the existing federal license covers. The license is small. The drop under it is not.

The PIO Ornelas has acknowledged, in public statements, that Elsinore “does not have experience managing or operating hydroelectric facilities.” That is true if you mean running a working power plant. It is not the whole story on the district’s institutional ties to pumped storage.

Burke has been candid about her board’s plan — in one place. She has talked to friendly outside podcasts. Asked about long-term plans on AmericaUnwon, she said the district’s “initial plan would involve water banking and selling or trading water locally in the Russian River watershed.” She did not rule out, later on, sending Eel water south into the California State Water Project. “We’re not pumping it and moving it,” she said. “It’s staying right locally. Long-term, in, you know, 50 years, I can’t tell you what that would look like. It’s hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Right now, that doesn’t pencil out to do that.”

She also pointed at past deals her district has done. “We have purchased out-of-area systems before. We don’t import that water into our service area, we use the sales from that water to offset rates to our customers here.”

What Burke has not said — in those interviews, or anywhere else — is what The Voice has now twice asked her in writing. Is pumped-storage hydroelectricity one of the “energy benefits” she has cited for Potter Valley? Has she had any past or present link to Nevada Hydro Company, or to LEAPS, through her board seat, through her consulting firm Watermark Associates, or in any other role?

The first ask, on April 27, got no reply. A second ask this week, after Part 1 ran, also went unanswered. Morris’ May 8 letter to Huffman, signed for the whole board, does not raise the subject.

Andy Morris — the only Elsinore officer named in Huffman’s demand letter — has not been quoted in any account of the Potter Valley story to date. The Voice sent his office five questions this week. He did not reply to us either. His name appears as the signature on the May 8 letter to Huffman. He has not spoken in his own words anywhere else.

Morris’ day job is selling insurance. He owns the Andrew Morris Insurance Agency in Wildomar. His outside roles all run through water-utility risk pooling — vice-chair of the California Water Insurance Fund and nominee for the executive committee of the Association of California Water Agencies’ self-insurance pool. He is a four-term Elsinore president. He is not a hydropower operator. He is not a project-finance principal.

The records request

On April 28, The Voice filed a California Public Records Act request asking Elsinore for the 2018 settlement itself. The request also asked for board minutes from January 2017 forward that mention Nevada Hydro, LEAPS, federal docket No. 14227, Bluewater, or PG&E in connection with Potter Valley. It asked for written communications between any district officer and Bluewater or any current Nevada Hydro affiliate since January 2022. And it asked for staff reports and board materials concerning Potter Valley since October 2025.

California law gives a public agency ten days to acknowledge a Public Records Act request. Elsinore has not provided the requested records. The ten-day window closed Friday, May 8.

That is the same Friday Andy Morris signed Elsinore’s letter to Congress — the letter that committed the district to producing records by May 29 on Huffman’s two categories. On May 8, Elsinore answered Congress on Potter Valley. On May 8, Elsinore let The Voice’s ten-day window close on Nevada Hydro.

The local front

Friends of the Eel River, the group that has fought Potter Valley diversions since the 1990s, has turned its opposition into a coordinated public-comment campaign aimed at Elsinore’s own board meetings. The group has asked members to put a list of questions to the Elsinore board at every meeting over the next few months. Among them: Has the board met with the California Division of Safety of Dams about Scott Dam’s earthquake problems? Does the board know that any new owner has to start federal licensing from scratch? And: “How do they plan to get water from the Eel down to Riverside County?”

David Manning, environmental resources manager for Sonoma Water and executive director of ERPA, has said publicly that making a large capital investment in a hydroelectric facility more than 500 miles from a water district’s home is “not something that he has ever encountered, nor is it something that Sonoma Water has ever undertaken.” Of the bid, Manning has said his coalition is “undeterred.”

Regina Chichizola, who runs Communities United for Water Protection, put it more bluntly in a May 3 opinion piece. The Trump administration’s invocation of Elsinore as a buyer, she wrote, is “either a pipe dream, a stalling mechanism, or a water grab beyond anything the North Coast has ever seen.”

Under California law, she argued, the water diverted at Potter Valley is “abandoned water.” Any new diversion would need a state-approved water-rights transfer that “needs to be in the public’s best interests” — a test, she argued, a Riverside County claim on Eel water in this day and age would not survive.

State Assemblymember Chris Rogers, whose district covers the Eel and Russian, held a town hall in Potter Valley on March 21. “Any politician telling you that there is a buyer is selling you snake oil,” Rogers told the room.

The Round Valley Indian Tribes — federally invoked in Huffman’s Dos Rios reframing — have not made a public statement since their attorneys met on April 21. In Part 1 of this series, Tribes President Joseph Parker said in a phone interview that no one — not the Agriculture Department, not the Interior Department, not Elsinore, not the Trump administration — had reached out to the Tribes about the bid at all.

Back to the question.

Visitors stand and sit along the shore at Wiskers Fishing Beach in Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

What are the Lake Elsinore people up to?

The water-grab story — the version that says Elsinore wants to import Eel River water to relieve Riverside County’s supply problems — does not survive the facts. There is no aqueduct from Mendocino to Riverside. There is no water available for purchase, because Round Valley holds the senior right. There is no federal hydropower license for sale, because PG&E is surrendering it. What a buyer can pick up is the infrastructure — the canal, the powerhouse, the diversion works.

Two real plays sit underneath the water story.

The first is energy. A pumped-storage facility built on the Potter Valley drop, run by a district whose home turf is the failed site of the largest unbuilt pumped-storage plant in California, would be a real asset on the grid. Steindorf’s blunt question — why would anyone buy a dam with significant seismic safety issues? — is the question the energy play has to answer. The 2018 settlement is where the answer would either show up or not.

The second is politics. Naming Elsinore as the buyer lets the Trump cabinet argue for moving Potter Valley federal — away from PG&E’s surrender process and into the Bureau of Reclamation system, where the administration would have more control over what happens next. Elsinore gets political cover. Possibly federal money. The administration gets a vehicle to challenge a local plan it does not like.

The two are not mutually exclusive. A federalized Potter Valley would, in fact, be the project that makes the energy play possible at scale.

Morris’ May 8 letter does not pick between them. It commits to producing records on out-of-watershed Eel diversions. It frames the bid as “broader benefits throughout California.” It says nothing about electricity. It keeps both plays alive.

May 29 is the next federal date on the calendar. That is when Elsinore has said it will begin handing over its non-exempt records to Congress.

At Scott Dam, the gates are still open. The lake keeps draining. PG&E’s final tear-down plan is due at federal regulators in July.

Part 1 of this series, “The Potter Valley dams are coming down,” ran in The Mendocino Voice on May 1.