Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins reacts to UNWON report on Potter Valley dam removals: "I'm on it."

“This was just flagged for me,” Rollins posted on her X account. “INSANE. I’m on it.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has responded to an UNWON report on the planned removal of two dams in Potter Valley, California that will leave hundreds of family-owned farms and ranches without water.

“This was just flagged for me,” Rollins posted on her X account, tagging UNWON. “INSANE. I’m on it.”

Her post quotes a video of Potter Valley farmer Dan Thornton describing how his farm has been impacted by sudden water cuts from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the California power company that owns and operates the doomed dams.

“If PG&E takes away the water from Potter Valley, my family farms will disappear,” he says. Thornton is a fourth-generation pear farmer. Some of the trees in his orchard were planted by his great-grandfather. “Within one year, without water, these 110 year-old trees will no longer survive.”

According to Potter Valley Irrigation District manager Don Brown, water shortages have continued in the weeks since the sudden August 4 cutoff. Many farmers are about to enter harvest, and fire season is just around the corner.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins

“Shutting off the water prior to harvest made it a very difficult time for us,” Thornton says. “We’re being informed right now we may not be able to have a post-harvest irrigation. If the dams go out, this is a dry valley and this valley will cease to have water sources for firefighting, for farming, for any activity.”

PG&E submitted its final surrender application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) on July 25. If their request is approved, the hydroelectric project will be decommissioned and destroyed, leaving 600,000 Northern Californians without access to a vital water source that has shaped the region for over 100 years.

The community believes help from the Trump administration could be their only hope to save their water. Rollins’ statement marks the highest level of public support and attention the situation, which has largely been ignored by the media, has received.