U.S. Rep. Huffman discusses Potter Valley, Last Chance Grade projects

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) is enjoying an auspicious month. During the June 2 primary, the incumbent congressman secured a spot on November's ballot with a definitive victory, garnering more than 55% of the tallied votes in a field of eight candidates for the newly redistricted CA-02 (those results are expected to be ratified on July 10).

Last week, Huffman spoke with the Times-Standard about several North Coast issues, including the Potter Valley Project and Last Chance Grade.

Last Chance Grade

Caltran's Last Chance Grade project celebrated a milestone last month, as well, with the completion of its Final Environmental Impact Report and Statement. That milestone, though, was marked by disappointment among some stakeholder groups that expressed concerns about the project's proposed environmental mitigation measures.

Huffman was instrumental in convening a working group including the Environmental Protection Information Agency and Save the Redwoods League, both groups that voiced displeasure with the current mitigation plan, with the former group saying "old-growth redwood forests are irreplaceable, and far more work is needed to properly calculate equitable compensation for these ancient trees than is reflected in Caltrans' current proposal."

While Huffman had not yet scrutinized the EIR/EIS in detail, he told the Times-Standard last week that he was confident that a solution could be reached that better reflects the concerns of those environmental groups, each of which has come this far in good faith agreement that the project is necessary.

"We've tried to encourage a lot of transparency about the environmental impacts of this," Huffman said. "There's no way that you can do a project like this without having some pretty unique impacts, and EPIC and Save the Redwoods League, have been really important stakeholders in those conversations.

"I think everyone has proceeded this far down the road in good faith, and in a spirit of just being candid about these impacts and acknowledging that we need to mitigate them as we go forward. The,good news is that Epic and Save the Redwoods League also agree this project needs to happen. And so, you know, we're really just having a conversation about mitigation, which is very natural at this stage of any major project. I have seen early proposals for mitigation evolve into something much more robust and supportable by environmental interests in virtually every project I know of this magnitude."

The Potter Valley Project

PG&E's Potter Valley Project license surrender and decommissioning process marked a milestone as well when, on June 23-24, the https://www.times-standard.com/2026/06/19/coalition-expresses-support-for-dam-removal-ahead-of-federal-potter-valley-meetings/Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hosted scoping meetings in Ukiah.

A first step toward assessing the potential environmental impacts of the project's decommissioning plan, the scoping meetings were viewed by proponents of decommissioning as a step toward eventual dam removal and the establishment of the New Eel-Russian Facility to continue seasonal flows from the Eel to the Russian River.

The Round Valley Indian Tribes and a coalition of government agencies, environmental groups and other authorities calling themselves the "Two-Basin Group" each released press releases ahead of this month's scoping meeting advocating for continued local control.

"There's a tremendous amount of momentum to get this over the finish line, and the reason for that is the economic and legal realities that continue to frame this subject," Huffman said. "We've seen this 11th-hour request - very politically driven - to ignore all of these realities and pretend that this is a project that can just be switched back on and operated just like it was for the last 100 years. That is fantastical. It is not serious or viable in any way, and it's really just a Hail Mary attempt to complicate and delay the inevitable FERC decision here."

"We do not consider federal takeover to be a reasonable alternative," FERC stated bluntly in its alternatives to the proposed project ahead of scoping.

Earlier this year, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made overtures about a potential federal takeover before eventually pivoting to suggest that the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water Company, a water company more than 500 miles away in Riverside, could take on the project, operating it as a hydroelectric facility despite FERC-acknowledged serious seismic risk to at least the Scott Dam, one of two dams that are part of the project.

Recent reporting by the Lost Coast Outpost on public records from Elsinore Valley provided to the Friends of the Eel River has suggested that a series of correspondences between EVMWD director Darcy Burke and its director Greg Thomas may have employed an AI tool like ChatGPT to help hatch a plan to take possession of the Potter Valley Project's assets and run them at a profit.

"It's a good characterization because those memos are written with such authoritative bravado," Huffman said. "And yet, they're so full of holes and errors."

Huffman also said that his office had filed a similar request for public documents regarding the Potter Valley Project but was never furnished with those documents, saying "it's amateur hour" out at the EVMWD.

A bipartisan bill to fund public lands

In an increasingly rare bipartisan congressional victory last week, the House of Representatives' Natural Resource Committee Democrats announced that ranking member Huffman and committee chair Rep. Bruce Westerman's (R-Ark.) had worked together to advance the America the Beautiful Act through committee.

That act would distribute $1.9 billion each year to America's national parks, public lands and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) facilities over the next five years to address chronic underfunding and a growing backlog of maintenance work. The bill, a successor to the Great American Outdoors Act, is currently awaiting a vote on the House floor.

"It's a big piece of legislation, and it has the potential to be a major bipartisan victory," Huffman said. "What it looks like in these public lands that we're talking about is often things that you don't even see or think about, but they are critical to operating those lands. We're talking about wastewater systems. We're talking about power supplies and other things where we have deferred maintenance to the point where systems are in jeopardy of failing, and the public's ability to use these lands and enjoy these places, along with public safety and other values, are compromised. That's what the Great American Outdoors Act that was passed five years ago was all about, catching up and getting ahead of this … backlog that had been allowed to fester for decades."

Robert Schaulis can be reached at 707-441-0585.

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