Text / Economic Benefits to Mendocino and Lake Counties from Removing the Dams on …

Economic Benefits to Mendocino and Lake Counties from Removing the Dams on the Eel River

Click here to view text. May contain additional pages.

Get Citation

Have a question about this item?

Contact Owner

Item information.

Title: Economic Benefits to Mendocino and Lake Counties from Removing the Dams on the Eel River
Creator: Daniel M. Ihara
Matthew R. Marshall
The Center for Environmental Economic Development (CEED)
Date Created and/or Issued: 2004
Publication Information: Friends of the River
Contributing Institution: UC Riverside, Library, Water Resources Collections and Archives
Collection: Clearinghouse for Dam Removal Information (CDRI)
Rights Information: Copyrighted
Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
Description: Scope/Content: Abstract: The mouth of the Eel River, the third-largest river in California, is nearly two hundred miles north of the mouth of the Russian River, yet high up at the rivers' headwaters, only two miles naturally separates these two rivers (see map, Figure 1). In 1908 humans breached that separation, completing a tunnel to link the two river systems. Eel River water travels through this tunnel to turn turbines to generate electricity below, in Potter Valley. After being used for this purpose, Eel River water is released to flow into the East Fork of the Russian River. The complex of facilities (including dams, reservoirs, tunnel, and machinery) used to store water and generate electricity is currently owned by PG&E and is known collectively as "The Potter Valley Project" (PVP). The Potter Valley Project has been characterized in a Sonoma County Water Agency Report as "not economic as a hydroelectric project." Furthermore, the dams have contributed to the collapse of the Eel River salmon populations which once "supported runs of salmon and steelhead trout that were estimated to exceed one-half million fish" (Dept. Fish and Game 2001, p. 57).
Scope/Content: Date constructed: 1908, 1922.
Type: text
Form/Genre: digital copy
Identifier: ark:/86086/n2x63mkm
744
Subject: Economics
Dams
Dam retirement
Place: Eel River, CA
Cape Horn Dam
Scott Dam
USA

About the collections in Calisphere

Learn more about the collections in Calisphere. View our statement on digital primary resources.

Copyright, permissions, and use

If you're wondering about permissions and what you can do with this item, a good starting point is the "rights information" on this page. See our terms of use for more tips.

Share your story

Has Calisphere helped you advance your research, complete a project, or find something meaningful? We'd love to hear about it; please send us a message.