No Farmers, No Food, No Future. (Photo: Hector Barajas, Adobe images)
USDA Intervenes in PG&E’s Planned Decommissioning of the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project
Secretary Rollins: ‘California’s war on agriculture has gone unchecked to the detriment of us all’
By Megan Barth, December 23, 2025 3:46 pm
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has intervened in the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project proceedings currently being considering by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
“This action will allow USDA to ensure that the interests of the National Forest Service, local farmers, ranchers, agricultural producers, communities, and other stakeholders are represented,” the USDA said in a press release.
“If this plan goes through as proposed, it will devastate hundreds of family farms and wipe out more than a century of agricultural tradition in Potter Valley,” said USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins. “Water is the lifeblood of farming. Without it, crops fail, businesses close, and rural communities crumble. For generations, farmers here have put this water to good, productive use. But under California’s radical leadership, the needs of hardworking families are being ignored while the needs of fish are treated as more important. That’s simply wrong. This plan would put countless USDA investments at risk and leave families even more vulnerable to drought and wildfire. This is why I’m intervening in the FERC proceedings and urging them to reject the pending application.”
Putting FISH over PEOPLE is not conservation — it’s radical ideology.
California’s push to tear down critical dams in the name of environmental extremism threatens farmers, ranchers, rural communities, and our food supply—prioritizing fish while ignoring the people who depend on…
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) December 22, 2025
Secretary Rollins also filed comments urging the FERC to reject PG&E’s current application to surrender its FERC license for the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project. She also urged the FERC to reject PG&E’s application unless significant deficiencies are addressed.
“Her notice of intervention guarantees USDA’s ability to actively participate in the proceedings, protect its programs, and advocate for the farmers and communities who depend on the project’s reliable water flows,” the agency announced.
For background, as reported by The Globe, “California Farmers are Being Left Out to Dry.”
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the state’s largest utility, has filed plans with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to decommission the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project. That project includes Scott Dam, which forms Lake Pillsbury, and Cape Horn Dam, waterways that divert water through a tunnel into Potter Valley. If those dams are removed, the lake will disappear and more than 600,000 northern California residents, including hundreds of family farms, will lose a century-old water supply.
State policymakers support these efforts. The Governor has openly boasted about removing dams across California to please environmental activists. Similarly, the Governor-appointed board of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates PG&E, is eager to comply. Their justification is salmon and steelhead restoration. The effect they are not acknowledging is the devastation for the farmers and ranchers who provide food and jobs in Mendocino, Sonoma, and Lake counties.
The Potter Valley Irrigation District is the lifeblood for many family farms that produce and raise crops and livestock, including pears, wine grapes, cattle, and lamb. Many of these operations have been passed down through generations of families for over 150 years. Although these farms depend on this irrigation system for survival, they have no voice in whether it continues to operate — even though their livelihoods are directly tied to its waters. Without ample water, these farms will collapse. Earlier this summer, PG&E secured permission from FERC to cut already low water flows from Lake Pillsbury, just two months before harvest season.
In a letter from the USDA to the FERC (see below), the USDA highlights the severe impact to the revenue and the generational devastation the decommissioning would cause in the Central Valley:
According to the last census of agriculture the counties of Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma, Humboldt, and Marin have a combined total of over $1.4 billion in sales of agricultural products. That’s well over $4.2 billion in extra economic activity due to agriculture if you assume a standard multiplier of $3 to $1 which is standard in the nearby Central Valley…
If the decommissioning is approved, hundreds of legacy farms and this area’s rich agricultural heritage will be lost.
In a December 12 op-ed published in The Mendocino Voice entitled, “Water is Life,” Rollings wrote:
The heavy hand of California’s state government has gone unchecked for decades. The results? Burned-out cities and landscapes. Manmade water crises. A widening socioeconomic divide.
It breaks my heart that our nation’s largest food-producing state has chosen special interests and political ambition over its farmers, ranchers and rural communities time and time again…
A government by the people should be for the people. California’s war on agriculture has gone unchecked to the detriment of us all.
Under the Trump administration, that war ends now.
This week, The Globe reported on the land seizure scheme written by California Democrats and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom:
Gavin Newsom created a task force to address “the agricultural land equity crisis.”
What agricultural land equity crisis?
The report the Equity Task Force recently released recommending a land grab from white farmers reads like a “How To” Marxism 101 manual at UC Berkeley.
One of their primary grievances is that “demographic trends in landownership differ greatly from those of agricultural labor in California;” i.e. not enough farm workers own the land on which they work.
By that logic, not enough teachers own the schools where they teach, or not enough dockworkers own the ships they load and unload.
Gavin Newsom is concocting new ways to drive up food inflation by handing over land and natural resources to California Native American tribes, minority groups and who they deem as generally aggrieved.
The report even recommends the development of local ordinances to restrict citizens from purchasing land unless they are part of a certain minority group.
According to Marxists, destroying agricultural land, destroying jobs, and destroying families is “equity.”
If Governor Newsom and his radical leftist allies remain obsessed with demolishing dams and sacrificing prime agricultural land, the perpetually aggrieved minority activists and Native American tribes they claim to champion won’t inherit thriving farms—they’ll be left fighting like vultures over the last pathetic drops of water in a parched wasteland, after they’ve destroyed the lifeblood that sustained generations of hardworking American families.
usda-potter-valley-comments-project-no-77-332
- 21,000 reports of illegal drivers flood Nevada DMV’s ‘Registration Spotter’ launched in October - December 29, 2025
- FEMA Denies Federal Aid for Arizona Flooding, Sparking Outrage from State Democratic Leaders - December 24, 2025
- USDA Intervenes in PG&E’s Planned Decommissioning of the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project - December 23, 2025
RELATED ARTICLES
-
November 7, 2018 -
-
February 20, 2020 -
More good news! So happy to see it. Thanks so much to Megan Barth and the CA Globe for covering it.
Merry Christmas!
You’re welcome and Merry Christmas to you and yours!
“Handing over land to Native Americans”
This is happening in Canada too in the Alberta region and Ottawa too. Dan Dicks with his Press for Truth reported on it. FOOD is also the target. So are our PETS. That’s why 400 OSTRICHES were unjustly killed in CANADA. The next Canadian target is an Animal Rescue in Canada.
Back to the UNS UNDRIP: I think this has to do with the UN’s UNDRIP. That’s the UNITED NATIONS’s Declaration on the Rights of INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.
the UN is an Evil Globalist Organization and the UN has close ties to the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, Globalist BANKSTERS, Bill Gates, the WHO etc.
The UN also wants to drive most people off most the land Globally and drive them into the UN’s 15-MINUTE CITIES aka SMART CITIES aka C30 cities.
The latest victim of the UN-WEF and GAVIN is the PALISADES-MALIBU Wildfire victims and the REIMAGINED-Rebuilt areas will probably be High Density High Rises and it’s going to be called SMARTLA2028.
GAVIN used to be a former Young Global Leader for the WEF aka WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM and he was so HAPPY this Wildfire happened judging by his completely INAPPROPRIATE giggles and little dance he did in response to these fires.
Anyway, these GLOBALISTS behind all this want at least 95 Percent of Humanity Dead. They’re really trying to cause HOLODOMER 2.0 which is MASS STARVATION which happened in Stalinist Russia. And they even declared this goal with the now destroyed GEORGIA GUIDESTONES in Georgia USA. On of those stones says:
Humanity Must be Maintained UNDER 500,000,000 In Perpetual Balance With Nature.
Back to GAVIN: Being a former WEF member who is closely aligned with the UN and their UNDRIP and China and other Globalists, I think that’s why he’s Destroyed a dam on the KLAMATH River and he’s going out of his way to DESTROY FARMLAND.
The GLOBALISTS and CHINA: The GLOBALISTS do NOT at all demand CHINA, the Worlds Largest Polluter SHUT DOWN any of their COAL PLANTS etc. I think they only Demand the Energy-Oil-coal SHUTDOWN of the USA and EUROPE because they are largely CHRISTIAN Nations and the GLOBALISTS do NOT want anybody standing in the way of forming their GLOBAL 1-WORLD-ORDER GOVERNMENT.
And they’re also using MUSLIMS along with ANTIFA-BLM and Career Criminals and NGOS and SOROS and JUDGES-POLITICIANS who adamantly Refuses to defend their own fellow citizens as a bludgeon to Weaken and break us all down.
If we’re all broke, the increasing Inflation and food problems and Judges-SA-Lawyers refuse to defend us, and with BANKING-ECONOMIC Collapse and possibly starting WW3, the USA can easily be overcome and Destroyed.
And GAVIN along with other equally corrupted Governors and judges will laughing at all of us
So, why isn’t more being done to STOP all this?
Sorry about being so long-winded on this subject.
Oh, Gavin Newsom strongly CHAMPIONED the DESTRUCTION of 4 Klamath River Dams done by a NON PROFIT for the Yurok Tribe and some other tribe.
I thought it was only 1 dam, but it’s 4 dams.
The UN also had a map of the USA and most of the land was completely OFF LIMITS to Humans, probably.exempting the GLOBALISTS of course.
Who’s the next victim of the UN, it’s UNDRIP and other TREASONOUS USA POLITICIANS?
The UN and other GLOBALISTS want the vast majority of Humanity wiped out and outside of starting WW3, Banking-Economic and FOOD Collapse, attacking us with a lot more LUHAINA-MAUIs and MALIBU-PACIFIC PALISADES attacks and DESTROYING and ensuring complete DEVASTATION of the Survivors and NOT PUNISHING Career Criminals and Not completely shutting down SOROS and his ANTIFA-BLM armies along with MUSLIMS,
We’re probably not going to survive this unless serious attention and punishment is delivered, even if it means gallows and firing squads for all these traitors. I think too many Leftists, judges and politicians would want to help release these criminals so keeping them in prison long term won’t work.
I also never dreamed I’d say anything like this, and I’m no vigilante, but I think we’re in huge trouble and Trump really needs to get much much more hard-core on this.
And look at how much the Governors, Gavin, Pritzker and Tim Walz are out of control and how much damage they’ve done.
I think the new governor of Virginia, Spanberger and her DA who threatened to KILL his Republican opponent and his 2 young children are going to be a problem too.
Well, I’m not gonna say you’re wrong. Everything you’ve pointed out sounds right to me. I’ve often asked myself what the hell is the end game these evil no good progressive lefty’s are trying to get to because nothing I’ve come up with so far fits. Other than they have gone crazy. But that don’t fit either I guess, The destruction of this country? Yep that fits. I hope the president does get down on these low life’s and stop them if he can. If not, and he only slows them down…people ARE stupid enough to vote for their own demise. I’ve seen it. Sh*t. Revolution? It’s happened once, it can happen again I guess.
THANK YOU FOR BEING A VOICE OF REASON in this formerly great state, Secretary Rollins!!!
“…under California’s radical leadership, the needs of hardworking families are being ignored while the needs of fish are treated as more important.”
Newsflash : the fish are just scapegoat for either A)the CCP need to acquire verdant farmland on the cheap. since they must be paying off our Democrat overlords handsomely (see Newsom’s fixation on giving BYD business at every opportunity, or
B) the WEF plan to starve the general populace either outright or to make food so expensive that they die off or move since food becomes too expensive, or
C) All of the above
The two largest “products” of California have been OIL-fuel production and AGRICULTURE. Forestry was next. They’ve been systematically dismantled by Democrat policies (with the help of RINOs) and radical “environmentalist” oligarchs while main stream media keep the public ignorant and subservient to Democrat rule. The result is higher than the national average for gasoline, groceries and housing. People will move to affordable states or submit to hardship… annihilation.
Grateful for this platform that consistently reports on the confusion, corruption and crisis California suffers under malicious and inferior leadership.
The Canadian land grab that supposedly transfers privately held land to natives is actually an intermediate step in transferring Canadian land to the UN. If the natives management is not satisfactory to the government the UN gets it.
I suspect Noisome is following a similar plan but with the Chinese getting the land.
NOTE – Canada has 500,000 Chinese troops on their land waiting to take over Canada and to attack the US.
It’s like when Obama said that he would do “what is right” rather than what works, taken together with the WEF telling us that we will own nothing and we will be happy.