“In the west, whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting,” the saying goes. And in California, the wealthy coastal elites that dominate the Democratic Party have been using water to beat up rural farming communities for decades.
The latest casualty in the Democratic Party’s war on farmers is the residents, most of them farmers and ranchers, of Potter Valley, a community 18 miles northeast of Ukiah, and 80 miles north of Santa Rosa. The hundreds of family farms that define a way of life in this corner of Mendocino County are about to lose their water supply, which means they are about to die.
At the direction of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, has filed plans with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to decommission the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project. The project actually consists of two dams, the Cape Horn Dam, which was completed in 1908, and the Scott Dam, which was completed in 1920. For over 100 years, the water from the Potter Valley Project, which created Lake Pillsbury, was the primary water source for almost 400 farms and a secondary water source for residential communities stretching from Ukiah to Santa Rosa.
The Cape Horn and Scott dams are being destroyed to help grow the salmon populations of the Eel River, on which the dams are built, and the Russian River, into which the Eel River flows. The bottom line is that Democratic Party coastal elites would prefer to see more salmon in the Russian River and fewer farmers living in Mendocino County.
“I, our entire city council, city manager, and the fire chief all have the same concerns as a community and are extremely worried we will not have a guaranteed, safe and reliable water supply for the future,” Cloverdale Mayor Todd Lands said at a recent town hall, adding that the end of the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project would mean the destruction of the “quality of life” of the community.
Frost Pauli, a fifth-generation Potter Valley resident and volunteer fire captain, warned, “Our property values are going to decrease. Our property taxes are going to decrease.”
“Every fire chief in California will be saying the same thing. This is not a plan that protects our community,” Cloverdale Fire Chief Jason Jenkins added. It’s not “just short-sighted. It’s dangerous.”
Considering the constant drought and wildfires that plague the Golden State, one would think that California Democrats would be adding as much new water storage capacity as possible. But building is not what California Democrats do. If the Democrats could build, there would be a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the state would be adding, not subtracting, water storage capacity. There is a reason the number of farms in California has fallen 10% over the last decade and 20% since 2000.
The wealthy environmentalist elites who live in San Francisco and Beverly Hills have other priorities. They would rather live in a gated urban paradise where they could visit nature on the weekends. And the rural communities that are made to suffer so Democrats can know there are more fish in the Russian River? Well, they can just move to some other state, such as Utah or Texas.
