Geothermal Power Station In California Seeing Possible Volcanic Event

Elaine Meinel Supkis

All over the West, one can see mountains that were formed by fissures opening up and releasing vast quantities of lava. This is totally different from volcanoes. The mountains on the West side of Tucson were formed this way. New Mexico has some recent eruptions of this type. Often, these rifts open in conjunction with a major earthquake on a major fault line. In California, a hot spring community is seeing increased activity.

&hearts This month and especially this week has seen a constant flurry of small earthquakes along a line of hot springs used as a geo-thermal electrical power station.

This excerpt is taken from the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory 1992 Bulletin:

There were no earthquakes (ML >= 2.5) observed in the area of the geothermal field between 1949 and 1975. Starting in 1976 earthquakes were observed in the geothermal field and the rate steadily increased to a rate of at least 12 earthquake (ML >= 2.5) per year since 1984. The maximum annual rate was 26 earthquakes (ML >= 2.5) which occurred in 1988 (this is equivalent to 40 percent of the annual rate for the entire central coast ranges).

And how about 12 a week? The fact that this was geologically 'quiet' and is now showing many changes means a geological 'event' is on the near horizon. &hearts Click here to see the 30+ low level earthquakes since 12/17/06>

The fact that this area has a long rift with bubbling hot springs is a sign it is geologically active and can suddenly erupt. This possibility can be calculated based on previous eruptions of this sort. Namely, all across the American West are these lines of eruptions from Texas all the way to California. They tend to run from north to south just like the fault lines due to the North American continent plowing relentlessly into the various plates in the Pacific that are also being shoved by the Australian plate, northwards.

&hearts There are two springs next to each other, Geyser springs and Anderson Springs.

Only the main hot spring at Anderson Springs has maintained a recognizable identity since the 1930s. The hot spring is actually a cluster of seeps and springs that issue from a small fault in a ravine southwest of Anderson Creek. Published and unpublished records show that the maximum temperature (Tm) of this cluster fell gradually from 63°C in 1889 to 48°C in 1992. However, Tm of the cluster climbed to 77°C in 1995 and neared boiling (98°C) in 1998. A new cluster of boiling vents and small fumaroles (Tm = 99.3°C) formed in 1998 about 30 m north of the old spring cluster. Several evergreen trees on steep slopes immediately above these vents apparently were killed by the new activity.

Thermal waters at Anderson Hot Springs are mostly composed of near-surface ground waters with some added gases and condensed steam from The Geysers geothermal system. Compared to gas samples from Southeast Geysers wells, the hot spring gases are higher in CO2 and lower in H2S and NH3. As the springs increased in temperature, however, the gas composition became more like the mean composition of steam discharges from the Southeast Geysers. The hot spring waters are low in ions of Cl, B, and Li, but relatively high in HCO3, SO4 and NH4. The stable-isotope compositions (deuterium and oxygen-18) of these waters plot near the global meteoric water line. Geochemical data through time reveal apparent maxima in the concentrations of SO4, Fe, and Mn in 1991 to 1992, before the cluster became hotter. The black-to-gray deposits from the new spring cluster are rich in pyrite and contain anomalous metals.

So, not only has the temperatures risen and earthquake activity taken off, we see the chemical compostion changing, too? This strikes me as a good time to reassess human activities in this area. Geologists haven't seen a rift open in the last 200 years but many of the rift mountains in the West are testiment to not only these things happening but they run a long time, sometimes for many years, leaving good-sized mountains with a characteristic profile looking like giant teeth. Sawtooth mountain, for example. When I lived at the observatory there near Ft. Davis, we could see the sun set behind those dramatic black toothed mountains. My father told me how they formed and I loved picking around the rocks there, lots of hard, glassy volcanic rocks.

Once a fissure opens, it seems, it can suddenly rip along an earthquake fault and eject very hot magma along a spline 30 or more miles long. Mammoth Lake which is in California, is another potential site of such a rift opening. Needless to say, real estate agents are busy developing along this rift line and are building homes and golf courses right smack dab on it. Before these rifts split open and turn everything into a toothy mountain, they first crack open enough for water to form springs and lakes along their future splines. This is why golf courses are being built in the middle of just such a rift.

&hearts Not only has the earthquake activity restarted and increased and the temperature of the water gone up, power plants have been built on the hot springs in California.

Between 1994 and 1996 three GPS surveys were conducted in The Geysers region of northern California. Our aim was to constrain models of the stresses and strains induced by geothermal power production in that region. Each survey spanned The Geysers geothermal field and consisted of typically 40 monuments. These monuments had been previously employed in a series of first order leveling surveys during the 1970’s. This earlier study had determined that The Geysers region was subsiding, with a maximum rate of 0.048±0.0055 m/yr between 1973 and 1977.

OK--- check list for a volcanic event: there is subsidence in one sector while another bulges. Hot springs get much hotter. Springs suddenly disappear. The chemistry of the springs changes radically. Various gases are emitted. Microswarms of earthquakes begin and then increase, getting stronger gradually. Back when geothermal power was first proposed there was opposition to drilling in these zones due to the possibility it might trigger an eruption.

Some hot springs are more stable than others. Japan has many hot springs all over the place, it is an earthquake/volcanic prone island, after all. But they don't get these sudden rift events. Even South America doesn't have a lot of sawtooth type mountains like we see in our own country. I would suppose this is due to the fact that the center of our continent, unilke South America, is really a giant 'rift' zone with several very big rifts in California and the states bordering on California. All of Central Valley is really a long, north/south rift and the Gulf of California is where this rift has dropped to below sea level. Running alongside this is a much smaller rift valley that starts in San Francisco bay and moves down to Santa Barbara.

Because of this, drilling for energy in hot springs in Germany or Japan doesn't lead to the possibility of disturbing a rift and opening it up, disasterously. But here, we should be very leery of doing this as we can see today as the possibility of the hot springs in California opening up violently if the Hayward fault suddently shifts along its north/south axis.

&hearts Here is another article explaining how geothermal points are connected to volcanic activity.

Geothermal reserves are found around the world in zones where
"recent" volcanic activity has taken place. Volcanos are prevalent
in areas where the Earth's plates are pressing against each other.
"Magmatic activity on the global scale can be located and
delineated within the framework of plate tectonics, which allows
one to delimit broad geographical areas of geothermal potential."
1 Significant geothermal reserves are present in the Western United
States, Italy, New Zealand, Japan, Western Latin America, Iceland,
the Philippines, Indonesia, Eastern Africa, Egypt, France, the
Portuguese Azores, India, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Iran, Taiwan,
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. "According to a
conservative estimate, it is expected that by the end of the
present century 100,000 megawatts (MW) of electric power would be
generated from geothermal resources. " Geothermal power has been
lauded by many as an "environmentally friendly"
alternative to the burning of fossil fuels to generate
electricity. However, the process of drilling for and harnessing
geothermal reserves is not environmentally benign.

&hearts Let's look at a disasterous drilling job in one of the planet's most active geological areas:

European geologists said Monday it may be impossible to stop a massive surge of hot sludge on Indonesia's densely populated island of Java, saying it could be the birth of a new mud volcano.

The mud, which runs five meters (16 feet) deep in some places, has submerged houses in four villages since it started spewing from a hole four months ago, displacing more than 10,000 people.

At least 20 factories and 270 hectares (665 acres) of land also have been inundated or abandoned due to safety reasons.

Dr. Grigorii Akhmanov of the Moscow State University said there was no way to know what triggered the mud flow tectonic activity or drilling by the gas exploration company Lapindo Brantas.

&hearts Click here to see more pictures of this disaster.

Humans love to ignore nature. We just witnessed one of the biggest earthquake events in the last 400 years and the reverberations of the Boxing Day earthquake in 2004 still continue. Unlike some other great quakes, this one happened where a 'hinge' connects the great mass of Asia with the rapidly moving Australian plate. Imagine someone shouldering open a closed door so they can move forwards into a new room.

The door is the ocean plates in front of Australia and the volcanic island chains rising along this line connect to Asia at this hinge which is the northern edge of Indonesia. The crack made in the earth's crust by this shoving by Australia was one of the longest seen by geologists in modern times. The energy released and the forces set in motion by this are not done at all, not at all. Everything is rearranging itself subteranneanly. We can't see it but it is happening, the earthquakes are just indicators of the turmoil below. The opening of this rift rang the earth like a giant gong.

So of course, humans continue to do things as if nothing has changed. The fact that this hot mud has started to flow and can't be stopped is another sign there is great disturbances downstairs. This could easily happen in California which is, along with Indonesia, a geological hot spot that has been remarkably silent since the Boxing Day Quake. All other parts of the planet have already responded in some significant way and in California, we see only tiny tremblings and some interior grumblings.

I revisited the Mt. St. Helen's eruption to see how we responded to that geological event. The government really didn't want to spend much money preventing people from living within range of an eruption. Even as the mountain gathered steam, people complained bitterly about not being able to vacation right next to this dangerous giant. The government kept letting everyone back in and reducing the danger zone so people could either make money or have fun.

Funds to track the volcano were reduced and scientists had to scramble for funding even as the volcano prepared to destroy everything. When it blew out, nearly 60 people died. I read in National Geographic's older issues in my attic, the story of a volcano in southern Mexico that was called 'dormant' until one day, after a long session of earthquakes, it blew up, killing the scientists trying to figure out why it was having so many earthquakes and killed a lot of natives, too. At no time was the government ready to evacuate people sufficiently.

In the volcanic hot zones across the planet, people hate moving away from these dangerous giants because they also are the gods of fertility and life. So we make a dangerous deal with them. We create gods out of them so we can somehow get them to cooperate with us and not destroy us.

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Comments

[D.F. FActi]

dear elaine,
merry merry saturnalia and christmas. ho ho.

'have a fat orange cat on my lap. nameed george - but he's not like THOSE georges.

cooked all morning. of to my nephew's where i'll cook some more.

hope you all are happy and healthy on the mountain.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Wow! Merry Christ---Pegasusmas to you, too!

Chris was very sick the last five days so I cancelled our feast. Alas.

[Rosemary]

Merry Christmas, Elaine!

I am alone today and enjoying using the time to catch up on your blog. I've missed reading it for quite a while.

[Rosemary]

Elaine, o/t, but I wanted to call your attention to a fairly new blog that has been getting a growing number of readers. It was started by a man who was growing impatient with Juan Cole's reporting on the Middle East, where he was seeing a number of errors in translation and meanings missed in what Cole was reporting that different newspapers there were saying.

Here it is: http://arablinks.blogspot.com/

The blog is called Missing Links.

The blogger is known as Badger. He's a linguist, a thoughtful and careful person, very perceptive. He's probably associated with an American university.

In my opinion, his blog is the best resource available for sorting truth from propaganda.

You might want to take a look.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Thank you, Rosemary.

Actually, I have been aware of that blog for a while. There is one thing I avoid, actually, and that is over-finetuning things. Namely, if one looks too closely at the trees, one can't hear a tree fall in the forest, so to speak. Heh.

People all over the web make all sorts of complaints about translating this or that, I ignore most of that. Everyone uses language to evade the truth, this is normal for all humans. We need to run away from things somehow which is why 'plain speaking' is such a disaster (another heh).

I really don't care about which faction is killing whom, I do like to see oddball stuff and this usually jumps out at me via the mainstream news of all places mostly because they are so innocently ignorant of what they are reporting, they don't hide stuff too well (accidentally, totally accidentally).

[Grizzled Adams]

Another Solstice has passed.........we survive..........Hope you and yours have had a merry time of it. Keep up the good work.

LUV Griz

[Spud]

You folks in California should come to Idaho or Nevada, such as Arnold has, during any high tide and winter solstice event.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

You forgot to say, 'Break a leg'. Heh.