{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Rights to cold water a hot topic","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":390,"description":"May 25, 2022 — The struggle over the water of the Eel River continues. With PG&E operating the Potter Valley Project on an annual license, environmental groups like Friends of the Eel River are claiming violations of the Endangered Species Act, and asking regulators to reconsider authorizing the annual license. Meanwhile, Russian River water users, whose attempt to take over the hydropower license was stymied by a lack of funds, are now strategizing how to acquire the water rights held by PG&E. “Our job is to protect the diversion, to assure that that water can continue to be diverted into the Russian,” said Janet Pauli, of the Potter Valley Irrigation District and the Inland Water and Power Commission. She added that “The original water rights for the diversion list, as beneficial uses, production of power and irrigation…it’s a matter, though, of acquiring that water right, and making sure that we have control of the diversion itself.”\r\nAlicia Hamann, the Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River, spoke a few feet off the tarmac of the Ukiah airport Friday morning, after taking reporters on an EcoFlight in a six-seater Cessna over the wilderness surrounding the Eel. She says Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury eleven miles from the diversion, is thwarting the life history of a unique species. “There are rainbow trout that are trapped up behind Scott Dam in the hundreds of miles of excellent cold-water habitat that exists up there in the Mendocino National Forest,” she asserted. “Those rainbow trout are really, really similar to steelhead. And what genetic researchers have found is that those trout have the alleles, the genetic coding, that would allow them to, one, become anadromous again, so to become steelhead, and two, to adapt the life history that is summer-run steelhead. So, to put it really simply, there are trout up behind Scott Dam that, if given the opportunity to reach the ocean again, their progeny could become summer steelhead.”\r\nThere’s...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}