Concerns about geothermal projects

[Erlinda]

In today's New York Times there was an interesting article about geothermal projects that appear to actually cause earthquakes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/busine...therm.html

Just what Puna needs, eh?

[JerryCarr]

I just read the article, and the rock layers being tapped for heat in Switzerland and Northern California were described as being quite different from the sort we have in Puna. The quake that set off panic in Basel was a 3.4! Those just barely get noticed around here.

Have there been any reports of increased frequency or magnitude in quakes around the Puna geothermal operation? It seems like this would have been mentioned before now if it was a real problem. I would worry more about toxic and caustic gas releases, especially if I lived near the site. Our Councilwoman has raided the fund that was to be used to deal with such an event, so good luck dealing with a blow-out should one happen.

[Dave Smith]

Who knows whether there has been an increase in earthquakes around PGV? There certainly is a great deal of quake monitoring going on in lower Puna, and one would hope that any such correlation would be mentioned. However, it took three years for the word to come out that PGV's drillers had hit a pocket of magma in 2005, and then the news came from a scientific conference.

While one could make an argument that PGV might need to keep such information close to its vest (not an argument I would buy, by the way), one would hope that the government and scientific community would not be bridled by any dubious proprietary concerns. However, the Trib article from last December said that scientists at both the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and UH-Hilo were aware of the incident but didn't reveal it "because analysis was still underway."

That's more than a little disconcerting, and if true suggests scientists' complicity with PGV in withholding information that could affect public safety. According to articles on the magma strike, because of the viscous nature of the magma there supposedly was little chance of it causing an eruption, but no one knows that for sure. As geologists later noted, the drillers making the discovery "recognized immediately that this was something very anomalous."

This is not the kind of behavior that instills confidence in residents of lower Puna, especially those who remember the major blowout of PGV's well KS-8 in June 1991 that resulted in an unabated release of steam for 31 hours, and which forced the company to use the weight of several large bulldozers to stop the wellhead from being driven out of the ground. In addition, an independent analysis of the incident later revealed that the June incident was preceded by a smaller blowout four months earlier which was not revealed to the public.

[JerryCarr]

Dave makes some excellent points that make the case for more transparency and public information dissemination on the part of PGV. They do not do their case any good by withholding information. Even if the past incidents are eventually proven to not have been a major threat, the level of trust has been damaged, perhaps permanently.