Spring / Summer 2009

As spring stirs in the remote reaches of the Medicine Lake Volcano, the bald eagle, Pacific fisher, coyote and fox are in their natural habitat, and human intrusions continue to be mostly unnoticeable. You can stand on the rim of the Caldera and view an untrammeled sea of blue-green forested hills and lava flows all the way to Mount Shasta thirty miles away

Another Round in Ninth Circuit Court

by Michelle Berditschevsky and Peggy Risch

The pristine aquifer underlying the Medicine Lake Volcano, the largest shield volcano in the U.S., holds more water than all the major reservoirs in California combined! Medicine Lake is a huge water issue!

This unique mysterious volcanic landscape could change to industrial devastation if Calpine Corporation has is way and drills for 500 megawatts of electric power...

U.S. District Court issues unfavorable remedy in Fourmile Hill lawsuit

On December 23, 2008, Judge John Mendez of The U.S. District Court issued a remedy for our successful Ninth Circuit Court decision in the Fourmile Hill case on one of two currently proposed industrial geothermal projects in the Medicine Lake Highlands.

The Ninth Circuit’s November 2006 ruling was sent back to the lower court for a remedy that interprets the decision into terms that would rectify the illegal action, in this case, the illegal renewal of leases giving Calpine Corporation rights to develop geothermal power.

However, the remedy failed to translate the full intent of the Ninth Circuit ruling, which was clear when it stated: “The status quo before the 1998 [lease] extensions was that Calpine owned rights to produce geothermal steam valid through May 31, 1998, after which Calpine owned nothing.”

Remedy captures part but not the heart of the Ninth Circuit Court decision

The District Court remedy was mixed, and complicated. On the one hand, the judge ruled that the agencies had to vacate their decision to renew the leases, as well as the record of decision approving the Fourmile Hill project, and then prepare a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the lease extensions. At this point, the agencies could exercise their discretion to approve or deny the lease extensions. On the other hand, the ruling determined that the underlying leases were still intact, and therefore Calpine did not have to start from square one and apply for new leases. This is in direct contradiction to the “nothing” in the Ninth Circuit’s ruling.

If the judge had ruled that the underlying leases were expired—they were ten-year leases issued in 1988—then the agencies would have had the full discretion to decide whether it was even appropriate to issue leases at the Fourmile Hill site. Calpine would have had to start with “nothing”, meaning no property rights, no financial rights. That in a nutshell is the heart of the desired remedy that we were looking for and didn’t get….

New appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court

Our legal counsel, Deborah Sivas of Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, determined it would be in our best interest to challenge the unsatisfactory remedy, because it did not go far enough in capturing the Ninth Circuit Court’s intent. On February 19, 2009 we filed a new appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, making another case for invalidating the underlying leases that were illegally awarded in 1988 and renewed in 1998.

The new appeal could take two to three years to wind through the court system and will require the support of our members.

Telephone Flat lawsuit expanding

On the second legal case, we continue to work with the Stanford legal team to make sure that vital documents are included in the record for the lawsuit, as much of the information on the Medicine Lake Highlands leases is missing from the record compiled by the government. Based on this enlarged record, we are researching issues on this second, even more critical project, due to its location in the heart of the Caldera within a quarter mile from Medicine Lake. This lawsuit was put on hold for two years due to Calpine’s bankruptcy from which they emerged in early 2008.

Calpine pulls back on geophysical surveys,
for now

In late fall, BLM issued an Environmental Assessment on Calpine’s proposal to conduct geophysical surveys on its entire 66 square mile holdings in the Medicine Lake Highlands, in search of geothermal resource locations for further projects. We submitted extensive comments by the January 23rd deadline. On March 3rd, Calpine responded by asking BLM to hold off on a decision and developing “with BLM, a broad approach to address pending regulatory issues.” It certainly seems Calpine is devising some other means of circumventing the rules….

Minimal commercial quantities
unless toxic acids used

In over 20 years that Calpine has held geothermal leases in the Medicine Lake Highlands they have been unable to find a proven commercial resource in spite of numerous exploration attempts. Calpine is counting on the use of toxic acids that would dissolve rock matter and “pool the resource” in order to bring forth enough hot brine to prove economic feasibility, as reported to the California Energy Commission. This acidification process is an enormous threat to water quality.

MEDICINE LAKE HIGHLANDS IS A HUGE WATER SOURCE — California’s largest!

Medicine Lake Volcano and adjacent portions of the Modoc Plateau capture over a million acre-feet of snowmelt annually, storing it in a massive underground aquifer estimated at 36-40 million acre-feet. It takes 40 years for water to make its way through the mostly unmapped volcanic strata before emerging as “high quality waters of the state” through the pristine Fall River Springs, the biggest spring system in California. This information was presented by Dr. Robert Curry, a noted volcanic hydrogeologist, at Regional and State Water Board hearings in the course of our challenges to water permits in the past several years.

By contrast, this huge underground reservoir of high quality water is larger than all the rest of the surface water that is available to California, including all its top 58 reservoirs combined, which hold a total of 35.8 million acre-feet, as compared with the Medicine Lake Volcano’s 36-40 million acre-feet. In a drought year, two-thirds of Delta Flow exports are supplied by the Fall River Springs. Almost half of the drought-period monthly flows from the Pit River into Shasta Lake are from this remarkable groundwater reservoir.

Threats to groundwater from geothermal development

California’s largest and most extensive water storage system could be affected by the use of highly toxic hydrofluoric acids that Calpine plans to use to try to produce commercial quantities of wattage. This process, while commonly used for oil extraction, is not at all “routine” as Calpine claims for geothermal extraction involving water resources. Hydrofluoric acid is toxic at even a few parts per million. Yet this process was approved by the Bush administration with essentially no environmental analysis.

The Bonneville Power Administration (Department of Energy) acknowledged in an EIS on geothermal development that “Brine coming to the surface from supply wells and returning through injection wells has the potential to contaminate local water tables. Waste products pose problems unique to geothermal energy.”

What is astounding is that this immense water system—which flows through the Fall River, Pit River, into the Sacramento River, and from there into the California Aqueduct to be carried to the farthest reaches of Southern California—is unprotected and generally unrecognized; and that threats such as those coming from geothermal development are being ignored by regulatory agencies, risking direct harm to this enormous water storage resource.