Geothermal energy: BLM to hold lease sale Nov. 12

By Danny Bay

The Bureau of Land Management will hold a competitive lease sale on Thursday, Nov. 12 for a parcel of land consisting of 799.2 acres near the Mount Princeton hot springs area that is identified to hold an underground reservoir capable of producing geothermal energy.

The acreage up for auction exists under home and land owners who my be directly affected by potential developers.

"Under federal law they (the potential developers) have the right to develop the sub-surface heat underneath the property," Fred Henderson, chief scientist for prospective bidder, Mount Princeton Geothermal LLC said.

Steve Glover, Buena Vista resident and former owner and operator of oil and gas leases in Kansas, said, "This lease represents land where the BLM owns 100 percent of minerals underground. So if they own the minerals, they have the right to sell it. Whoever owns the surface ground is irrelevant."

Unlike many who are hopeful about this being the first site for geothermal energy in the state, Glover voiced concerns about irrevocable damages and disadvantages to land owners who may not understand what is happening.

Under the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916, a split ownership estate was established that allocated surface land rights to homesteaders but granted sub-surface rights to the federal government for mineral usage.

According to the SRHA, anyone has the right to enter these federally owned sub-surface lands, prospect, and file a mining claim and plan of operation. Since the geothermal resource sits underground, it is sub-surface land. This is the basis for the sale on Nov. 12, the first geothermal lease to be auctioned by the BLM in the state of Colorado. It is open to anyone who chooses to register.

Henderson said that the new owner of the lease will only have up to one year to create what will lead to the development of the resource.

"They can't sit on it indefinitely," Henderson said.

But what Glover said horrifies him is that if a developer does begin commercial production of electricity, the lease becomes open permanently. "They can ramp it up from a small project and no one could do a blessed thing about it," he said, adding that it has the potential to expand vastly and turn one of the most aesthetically beautiful parts of Colorado into a semi-permanent industrial area.

With Colorado receiving $338 million in Recovery Act Funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields, it is very likely that vast expansion is in mind.

Both Henderson and Glover said that there is little that the surface owners can do after a developer chooses a location for a plant and wells.

"These guys are going to want to put a factory somewhere," Glover said. He said that the land in the area would suffer in value. "That damage in value cannot be compensated," he said.

Bill Bennett, energy use advisor for Sangre de Cristo Electric Association, said he thinks a plant could be hidden very well by building it inside, like something similar to a greenhouse or by putting bunkers around it to shield the noise.

"Geothermal can run 24 hours with no down capacity. A 10 -megawatt plant could supply 84 percent of all the electricity we supply all year. There are people who understand that it has no consumption, no combustion and no pollution, but they just don't want to look at it," Bennett said.

In response to this, Glover referenced a Salt Lake Tribune article about a 10-megawatt geothermal plant in Utah that, after six months of generating power, produces only one megawatt of net energy and buys almost as much electricity to keep the plant running as the plant produces.

"There seems to be a real rush to do this. There's a lot of ego involved in being the first to do it and I understand this. But it could come at a great cost and it should be carefully considered," Glover said. "It would be a shame to so easily allow this to go forward."


(Originally published in The Chaffee County Times)