It’s Not my Fault!

A little over a year ago, a massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province killed tens of thousands of people, smashing buildings, cracking dams, and creating hundreds of thousands of homeless refugees. It was horrible. Could that quake have been caused in significant part by man? The Feb. 3^rd Gizmodo.com: “Some scientists are claiming that the Sichuan Earthquake, which killed over 70,000 people, might have been caused by a 511ft-high dam constructed just 550 yards from the fault line… The Zipingpu dam, located about three miles from the epicenter of the quake, holds 315 million tonnes of water. Some geologists believed that the weight of the water, and its ability to penetrate rock, could have changed the pressure on the fault line.”

It’s a question and a possible lesson for nations looking for new ways to harness alternative energy, to deemphasize our obsession with greenhouse-gas-creating fossil fuels. Dams control flood waters and provide hydroelectric power. Geothermal electrical power generation means messing with nature a whole lot more. Power companies drill deep into the earth’s crust to release pent-up reserves of heat, which is then used to generate clean electricity. But tapping that heat carries with it some pretty significant risks.

Picture a perfect Swiss city, Basel, complete with medieval Cathedrals and ancient buildings. Beautiful. Visualize a massive drilling rig, searching for “buried heat,” boring down three miles into the earth, tapping this geothermal treasure. And then feel the terror as the city began to shake causing a minor earthquake on December 8, 2006 – reminding the residents of the stories of a massive quake that shook the city, sending cathedral steeples crashing into the Rhine River over 650 years ago. The 2006 shake caused some damage, but more importantly, the drilling operations were terminated instantly. Swiss authorities clearly linked the quake to the drilling operation. That little effort disappeared into the pages of history, forgotten by most, but a clear reminder of the issues that face our nation as we explore “alternative energy.”

In early July, AltaRock Energy will begin a geothermal drilling operation in a region of northern California (about two hours north of San Francisco) laced with fault lines. The plans are to tap heat two miles beneath the surface. Seems that lots of faults also mean that the potential for heat from the earth’s core rising to the surface clearly increases. The June 23^rd New York Times: “Residents of the region, which straddles Lake and Sonoma Counties, have already been protesting swarms of smaller earthquakes set off by a less geologically invasive set of energy projects there. AltaRock officials said that they chose the spot in part because the history of mostly small quakes reassured them that the risks were limited.”

With some predicting that as much of 15% of America’s energy needs could be fulfilled by such geothermal power generation within two decades, it seems that we need to know a lot more about the relationship between drilling and tapping heat and the potential for releasing pressure and changing the underground stability in regions that might be prone to earthquakes. More disturbing may be the issue of breaking through the surface in an isolated region but triggering a chain of earthquakes that may reach hundreds of miles – along a spider web of linked fault lines – to major urban population centers. It would be a shame to learn this lesson the hard way.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I thought you might want to know.