New California Dam Removal Could Restore A River — And Destroy A Community

"Enviornmental decisions all-too-often ignore the social and economic costs of implementation.

As discussed on this site for years, sustainable decisions MUST give environmental objectives, people, and their livlihoods, equal weight. This is what is meant by 'holistic thinking'.

NOTE: this article was originally published to San Francisc Chronicle's Apple News channel on August 9, 2025. It was written by Kurtis Alexander.

LAKE PILLSBURY, Lake County — For those living on the shores of this mountain lake, the bone-rattling drive along a gravel road to get here is a small price to pay for the California dream.

Tucked amid towering pines and firs and gleaming with cobalt-blue water, Lake Pillsbury in the Mendocino National Forest is home to about 100 year-round residents and thousands of summer dwellers, lured by the pleasures of lakefront living: boating, fishing, swimming or simply enjoying a cold drink on a hot day.

“I don’t know if it will knock your socks off,” Frank Lynch, a third-generation cabin owner, said as he motored his pontoon boat across the sun-splashed reservoir on a recent afternoon. “But it’s a really nice lake.”

This vacation outpost about 3½ hours north of San Francisco, however, may not last much longer. The dam that impounds the lake is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and the company wants to take it down. The move would drain the 2,000-acre reservoir, with its 31 miles of shoreline, and deliver a debilitating blow to the community.

Removing the Scott Dam, alongside the removal of the smaller Cape Horn Dam downstream, both on the picturesque Eel River, is part of PG&E’s plan to retire a century-old hydroelectric operation known as the Potter Valley Project, which the company says has gotten too expensive to run.

Last month, PG&E filed the paperwork to decommission the project, officially putting the two dams and corresponding power facilities on course for demolition. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees power-producing operations, has final say over whether and when the company moves forward.

Downstream communities along the Eel River as well as environmental groups and tribes have cheered dam removal as a way to restore the river’s natural flows. Long-declining salmon and steelhead runs stand to benefit from the restoration.

At the same time, the plan has raised concerns about power and water supplies in Northern California. Perhaps most discussed is the potential to lose water that is tunneled out of the Eel River for power generation miles away, then released into the east fork of the Russian River, where it’s long served cities and farms in Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties.

Much less talked about is the fate of Lake Pillsbury.

“People will no longer be able to enjoy what the lake has to offer,” said Lake County Supervisor Bruno Sabatier, among those leading a long-shot campaign to stop the dam removal. “If we don’t fight for these small rural communities, who will?”

A bygone way of life

There aren’t any boat tours on Lake Pillsbury — or hotels, restaurants or grocery stores — but the next best thing may be Lynch’s pontoon.

With 70 summers on the water and an active role in the community’s advocacy group, Lake Pillsbury Alliance, Lynch knows the place better than most, and he’s happy to share.

From the captain’s seat of his 22-foot Sun Tracker, he pointed out the distant herd of tule elk that roams the lake’s north shore. He talked about the ghost town of Hullville that lies beneath the water, submerged with reservoir construction in the early 1920s. He mentioned the landing strip next to the reservoir that served soldiers during World War II. And he noted the possibility of losing it all.

“You’d hear people screaming and yelling if they were going to take down a lake that was more accessible,” Lynch said. “People don’t know about this spot so they might not care if it’s gone.”

Beyond losing a cherished destination, Lynch and other residents worry that draining the reservoir would mean less water for fighting wildfires and a reduction in taxes for the county as visitation drops and real estate values plunge.

Lynch’s brother, who also owns a home in the area, has been trying to sell his place for 11 months, but with the lake’s future on the line, “he hasn’t had a nibble,” Lynch said.

Lynch moored his boat at the Lake Pillsbury Resort, a primitive vacation spot that may be the most developed visitor accommodations in the region: about a dozen rental cabins and 40 campsites on a bluff above the water. All were full at the height of summer. A handful of other campgrounds and boat launches similarly front the lake.

The resort sells maps, ice and a few kitchen staples such as milk and cereal as well as T-shirts that read “Save Lake Pillsbury.” Like all homes and businesses here, the resort operates off the grid — in this case, getting power from generators. It has robust Wi-Fi that’s often sought out by campers, given there’s no cell service anywhere around.

“Some of the parents come in and say, ‘Don’t give my kids the Wi-Fi (code),’” said Andrea Coppa, a friendly woman working at the office.

Indeed, many visitors are looking to escape the routines of daily life.

“The things we don’t do anymore are still here,” said Joey Friedman, a Martinez resident whose extended family had settled in across several camp sites, as they’ve done each year for decades. “We’re playing games, telling stupid stories, sitting around the campfire.”

The manager of the resort, Mike Ahearn, says most of the roughly 7,500 guests he counts each summer are return customers.

“It’s all about tradition here,” he said, noting that he’s kept the business going because people keep coming back. “We’ve never had a record of making money. It’s been a labor of love.”

Without the lake, Ahearn said, the place is “done.”

A new vision for recreation

Dam removal would bring a whole new look and feel to the area.

The reservoir would dry up, and the Eel River, which descends from the rugged, upper reaches of the Mendocino National Forest, would resume its historical course through the mostly empty lake bed.

PG&E has committed to revegetating the lake bed with native plants and trees, in keeping with the surrounding forest, beginning a rewilding that supporters of dam removal say would reverberate far downstream — with more natural flows of water and greater vitality across the Eel River basin.

“It’s going to restore our habitat, our fishing and our way of life,” said Lewis “Bill” Whipple, former president of the Tribal Council of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, a federation of Native American communities that has grappled with the exploitation of their ancestral lands in the watershed.

The undammed Eel would become the largest free-flowing river in California. The main stem of the river runs about 200 miles, generally northward, through the mountains of the Coastal Range to Humboldt County, where it empties into the Pacific near Eureka.

One of the expectations of dam removal is that fish migrating from the ocean will find new spawning grounds in the river and creeks above Scott Dam. The dam has been an obstacle to fish passage for more than a century.

Liberating the headwaters, environmentalists say, could boost fish reproduction and ultimately fish populations. Historically, as many as 800,000 chinook salmon swam up the Eel annually. The migration now numbers fewer than 20,000.

For residents and visitors, the former reservoir site would remain accessible, per an existing conservation easement on the land. But how the land is used would obviously change. Activities would skew toward hiking instead of swimming, and kayaking instead of motorboating. Hunting and off-roading would probably remain pervasive.

A series of community meetings to envision the future of the area, both with or without the dams, has yielded countless ideas, most leaning into the region’s identity as a recreation hot spot.

Among the proposals, should the dams come down, is building a hiking trail along the Eel River that follows a onetime Native American trade route. Another possible trail would climb from the river to the nearby Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. Many in the community also want to improve the area’s roads, telecommunications and fire protection.

“As an undiscovered gem, there’s a real opportunity,” said Mark Green, executive director of CalWild, the nonprofit that was commissioned to hold the brainstorming sessions.

Officials at the Mendocino National Forest, which manages most of the land around Lake Pillsbury and counts the reservoir as one of its top attractions, declined a request for an interview. But in an emailed statement, District Ranger Frank Aebly said that the Forest Service was committed to “public recreation and habitat management” if and when the dams are razed. The federal agency hasn’t taken a position on dam removal.

Aebly said he expects most of the Forest Service campgrounds in the area to stay open, “though some may close.”

PG&E, which owns most of the land beneath the reservoir, told the Chronicle that it intends to sell or give the lake bed to another party, possibly a land trust or tribe, to manage like a preserve. The new owner hasn’t been determined.

The earliest that deconstruction of the dams and power facilities might begin is late 2028, pending federal approval, company officials said. The work would take two to three years to complete. The estimated cost, to be paid by PG&E and its customers, is $530 million.

PG&E officials said the decision to retire the project wasn’t taken “lightly.” But they felt it was necessary to stop saddling ratepayers with the high cost of running the aging operation, especially given the small amount of electricity it generates. The lost power, they said, would be replaced with cheaper energy purchased from the open electricity market.

As for the water that the project provides, the company’s decommissioning plan supports having a new agency take over the infrastructure that tunnels supplies for power generation from the Eel River to the Russian River. Going forward, however, the new water agency, which won’t produce electricity, has committed to moving less water, a setback that communities in the Russian River basin will have to contend with.

Appealing to the feds

At the Soda Creek Store, shortly after the 9 a.m. opening, Robert “Buzz” Ogneff was behind the cash register prepping for the day. First order of business was fixing the front door after a bear tried to break in.

“He got in the laundry room (in the back), busted a couple of things,” Ogneff said, as he stood at the counter, shirtless and ready for the morning heat to kick up. “If the bear got in here, it’d be a real mess.”

As the major retailer on the lake, the store is often the first — or last — stop on a visit. Besides offering gas, snacks and beer, there’s a small selection of camping equipment, auto accessories and tourist trinkets. For those wanting to commemorate the dust-choked, hourlong drive from Potter Valley (Mendocino County), which is the closest town, koozies for sale at the register proclaim, “I survived the road to Lake Pillsbury.”

The shop, for locals, is also a hub of communications. People come to inquire about road conditions, hunting season, the cannabis harvest and remote residents who haven’t been seen or heard from in a while (and probably don’t want to be).

Nick and Edie Uram have run the store for nearly 35 years. They live on site with their many cats, which means they respond at all hours to lost vacationers, car breakdowns and wildfires. The Urams, both in their 70s, plan to continue operating the business for as long as they can, though they’re bracing for change with dam removal.

“It will still be kind of a recreation area,” Nick said. “But the lake and the waterskiing and the jet skis, if they take out this dam, that’s over.”

A poster on the front of the store honors Lake Pillsbury as a “hero” for saving the community during the August Complex fire, the largest wildfire in California history. The lake was used for aerial water drops.

The community’s efforts to save the lake haven’t gone as well, though it has secured support from the county brass. The Lake County Board of Supervisors has sent letters to PG&E and state and federal politicos, making their case that Scott Dam should remain.

The board has even petitioned the Trump administration for help, appealing to the president’s nationwide directives to boost water supplies and power generation. The federal government hasn’t given any indication it will intervene to halt dam removal.

Lynch, who stopped at the Soda Creek Store on the way to his permanent home in Sonoma County, doesn’t like to think about Lake Pillsbury without a lake.

His father and grandfather built their family cabin here in the late 1940s, with only hand tools, and he’s never missed a summer on the water. He’s even spent the offseason at the lake before, hunkered down in the dark of winter and occasional snow.

“Will I still come when it’s 100 degrees and there’s only a trickle of a river?” Lynch asked himself aloud. “No. Not a lot. Well, yeah, I guess I’ll still come.”