Geothermal

[peteadams]

One aspect of the early PGV efforts was the land swap involved before they moved to their present site. PGV and the James Campbell Estate got the state/DLNR to swap the estate's original drilling location, as I understand it a difficult site right on the East Rift, for Wai Kele O Puna, the Forest Reserve mauka of Pahoa. Historically this was a culturally important area for backup food sources, timber, birds and other resources. That sort of cultural blindness and inside dealing on the part of the state and a wealthy and powerful estate was probably when people really started to get angry. Though the site was unused (other than as a marshalling area by the DEA for helicopter surveillance of our backyards), a small Hawaiian shrine was nicely maintained near the gate right up to OHA's recent acquisition of the Wai Kele. If you've ever been up there you know the drilling area is a scraped scar on the landscape with really ugly deep sedimentation ponds, scummy and lined with disintegrating fabric. Neighbors living only a few miles away from the site during construction were well and truly blasted for a very long time by the noise of the blow off. A cap, supposedly a muffler sort of device "the size of a Volkswagen" according to their story, was blown well away from the bore hole. The present cap has an old gauge on it that measures up to 1000 psi. And, yes, the cap does look quite rusty.