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Coso Geothermal to begin pumping at Hay Ranch |
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 |
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By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
5-26-2009 After four years of analysis, environmental review and multiple visits to court rooms and public hearings, Coso Operating Company is finally moving ahead with its Hay Ranch project after the Inyo County Board Supervisors approved the project on May 6. Coso representatives said that they are excited to finally be moving forward with the project designed to increase energy production at the Southern Inyo geothermal facility.
The project involves Coso pumping water from its Hay Ranch property, and piping the water more than nine miles to be injected into the power plant’s geothermal reservoir that has been depleted through evaporation over the 20 years of the plant’s life.
Opposition for the project has come from environmental groups and the owners of the Little Lake Ranch and Hunting Club, worried that the pumping will cause irreparable damage to the lake and surrounding riparian area.
Part of the Conditional Use Permit issued to Coso contains mitigation measures that would prevent the pumping from causing serious damage to the environment.
Joe Greco, senior vice-president of Terra-Gen Power, LLC, one of Coso’s parent companies, said in an interview Thursday that after so many years, he and everyone at the plant are eager to break ground on the needed eight miles of pipeline. All but one of the monitoring wells has been dug.
These monitoring wells will be fitted with triggers as an early warning system to alert the independent contractor in charge of the monitoring that water levels are dropping below acceptable levels per the letter of the permit.
Greco called the monitoring and mitigation “the teeth” of the project. The mitigation, as stated in an Environmental Impact Report required under the California Environmental Quality Act, calls for the pumping to cease when water levels drop to below the minimum allowable level. No matter the cause of the drop in water levels, be it drought or geological shifting, the pumping must stop until models and pumping rates can be re-calibrated so the pumping “will not cause any significant impacts to the county’s environment or economy.”
These monitoring wells will also be outfitted with transducers, or real-time electronic water and barometric pressure measuring devices. The information provided by the systems will be available to the public.
“We have nothing to hide,” Greco said. He added it would be up to the county how to disseminate the information, be it on a Web site or by public notice.
One of the unknown variables in this whole project is the lack of information about the Rose Valley aquifer, from which the Hay Ranch water will be pumped. The problem is that the aquifer is underground and so its exact shape and capacity are unknown.
The only real way to wring out any more information about the aquifer, is to pump it and see what happens, and it will also provide data that can be applied to models so a more accurate picture of the aquifer can be ascertained. This is one of the only facets to the projects that both sides have agreed upon.
Now that monitoring wells are being dug, Greco said, Coso is awaiting the permit from the Bureau of Land Management to begin construction of the pipe line.
Greco said he expects the permit to be in hand by June and then the approximately four months of construction will commence. He also said that local contractors and workers will be hired and utilized as much as possible, saying the work will require many welders.
Julie Faber, public relations officer for Coso, said that part of the entire geothermal project includes a commitment to local schools and being a part of the community.
Some of those schools, including the Lone Pine Unified School District, receive the bulk of their funding from property tax revenue. Coso’s property value was recently re-assessed and it is now the second largest tax payer to Inyo County behind the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Both Faber and Greco spoke of plans of Coso and Terra-Gen, a world leader in renewable energy production, collaborating with local schools and colleges to provide educational opportunities about renewable energy.
Greco spoke of the obvious, global shift toward renewable energy sources in an 11th hour attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the leading cause of global warming. He said that for the U.S., those sources are in the West, and the demand for qualified and experienced workers and engineers will soon skyrocket.
Chris Ellis, the geothermal plant site manager, said Coso is excited to get started on the Hay Ranch project. “Use of fluids from the Hay Ranch to support the generation of clean, renewable energy from Inyo County is an effective method of utilizing the county’s natural resource to promote business, provide jobs and solidify the future of Inyo County citizens in an environmentally responsible manner.”
The approval of the $14 million project is the largest private enterprise project ever approved by the county.
The Coso Geothermal Plant is also a way of trying to reach federal government requirements, per the 20 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) amendment to the Senate Energy Bill, S. 517. This provision that would require utilities to sell 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. Senator Jim Jeffords (R-VT) plans to introduce an amendment that will raise that requirement to 20 percent by 2020.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 10 July 2009 )
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