Winter 2010
Ninth Circuit Hearing — The Question that was Never Asked
By Michelle Berditschevsky and Peggy Risch
March 10th hearing of our Ninth Circuit Court appeal
Views from Little Mount Hoffman within the Medicine Lake Highlands--Mount Shasta rises in the distance thirty miles to the west. In the foreground black obsidian creates a contrast to the green forests.
On March 10th, the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, together with our Native American allies, the Pit River Tribe and Native Coalition, will again come before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, to further our case that energy leases were awarded illegally by federal agencies in the 1980s and 1990s on national forest lands in the sacred Medicine Lake Highlands just 30 miles northeast of Mount Shasta.
A ruling in the same Ninth Circuit Court in November 2006 determined that the leases had been illegally renewed in the late 90s and that Calpine Corporation “had nothing,” in the words of the decision, because BLM and the U.S. Forest Service had violated environmental and cultural preservation laws when the agencies granted a 40-year extension on the leases to Calpine Corporation. However, when the case was sent back to the trial court to implement the Ninth Circuit’s decision, the trial judge ruled that, notwithstanding the invalidation of the lease extensions, the 1988 leases were still intact.
Last summer, our attorney, Debbie Sivas of Stanford Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic, filed an appeal challenging the lower court’s interpretation, which went directly against the original Ninth Circuit ruling.
At this new hearing our attorneys will maintain that the leases, originally issued in 1988 for a duration of five years, and renewed once, expired by their own terms when the 1998 renewals for 40 years were declared null and void by the Ninth Circuit judges.
A moment of truth
Medicine Lake subdued by morning mists, healing waters for tribes, recreational uses by the public. USGS research concludes that the waters of Medicine Lake are free of mercury contamination that results from industrial development. Unfortunately, this would change if geothermal electricity production were allowed. Heavy metals such as mercury and arsenic would be spewed from cooling towers along with the toxic hydrogen sulfide gas.
The case is significant because if we’re right, Calpine Corporation will lose its six-square-mile lease holdings at the Fourmile Hill project site, for which it has proposed a 49-megawatt geothermal power plant with attendant well fields and pipelines.
The question that was never asked
What was never asked throughout the whole decades-long environmental and cultural review process is whether geothermal development was even appropriate for the Medicine Lake Highlands in the first place, given the area’s high value in holding California’s largest pure underground aquifer, its near pristine condition and importance for wildlife and recreation, its proneness to seismicity (after all it’s a volcano ), and not least, its prime spiritual and cultural significance to the Pit River Tribe and other Native groups near and far.
We have fought these projects for over a decade because we cannot let this desecration happen. The Medicine Lake Highlands are a landscape of the spirit. This area is critical because it symbolizes a worldview that must be preserved at a time when resource extraction seeks to infringe on everything sacred. It is a place where mystery can be tangibly felt, where industrial blight and noise have not drowned out spiritual qualities. It exudes a feeling of eternity. It represents our sanity and healing, our commitment to keeping beauty and peace alive in our world.
Second lawsuit
We’re also challenging a second power plant proposal known as Telephone Flat, which would spread over eight square miles in the heart of the Medicine Lake Caldera, in a separate lawsuit. Originally the Telephone Flat project was denied by local federal decision makers ten years ago, but was then approved in 2002 at the Washington DC level under President Bush, after the corporation sued the government for ridiculous sums of money in order to ‘break the bank’ and reverse the decision. Calpine Corporation prevailed in that strategy; then landed in bankruptcy from 2005-2008. This case trails behind the first case (Fourmile Hill) and has yet to be heard by the First District Court in Sacramento.
Earthquakes directly linked to geothermal technology
In an interesting turn of synchronistic events we have been tracking, recent articles in the New York Times validate a concern we’ve had since 2002, related to seismic impacts of geothermal development.
Geysers geothermal power plants in Lake County
These impacts are caused by the relatively untested new technology known as Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), which is known to induce seismicity in earthquake-prone areas (such as the Medicine Lake Highlands). Through the injection of toxic acids or high pressure water or obscure drilling techniques, EGS fractures (also known as “fracking” in the industry) the deep strata of bedrock in order to manufacture a geothermal reservoir where none existed previously. In other words, EGS alters the delicate geologic balance with little regard for groundwater tables and seismic hazards in earthquake-prone areas.
Although the news items point to proven seismic impacts from a December 2009 released Swiss-government funded study, hydrogeologist Dr. Robert Curry testified in 2005 before the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board about the potential for EGS to detrimentally effect California’s unprotected groundwater. On the Medicine Lake Volcano, which is an active seismic feature, this poses unacceptable risks to the State of California and its largest fresh water aquifer.
For the greatest good—the Swiss government takes action to protect the people
In December 2009, an EGS drilling program at the Geysers geothermal field in Lake County, California was aborted after local citizens protested that EGS had not been studied for its impacts on induced seismicity, and a number of other setbacks. This was in step with the recent release of the Swiss government’s scientific study of the new EGS technology and induced seismicity. In 2006 the Swiss government mandated the scientific studies on EGS and immediately shut down a $60 million EGS project to extract energy near Basel, Switzerland after it generated earthquakes that caused about $9 million in damage to homes and other structures. In addition to shutting down the EGS project, the former oilman who led the Swiss project was put on trial for criminal charges stemming from the project as “reckless damage of structures,” said Philipp Loser, a reporter at the Basel Zeitung.
Presumably in response to this report, the U.S. Department of Energy just last month issued a new policy of safeguards that would be followed prior to approving any funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and prior to initiating EGS technology. Although this is a start in the right direction, these safeguards have not yet been extended to an EGS permit approved by the Bush administration at the sacred Medicine Lake Highlands nor do they have any safeguards for protecting groundwater resources.
The Ninth Circuit Court hearing is on Wednesday March 10, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. at the
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 95 Seventh Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Your support in attending the hearing is welcome. If you’re interested in carpooling,
please call the Ecology Center at 530.926.5655. |
