Ever since the first waterwheel was created, human beings have tapped the earth’s resources to power everything from grindstones to rockets. When American dependence on petroleum was underscored by the energy crisis of the 1970s, the search for alternative fuels heated up. Geothermal energy, already used in Iceland and elsewhere, received increased attention in North America. The first article in this sidebar from National Geographic explores the optimistic outlook for geothermal energy in 1977. The 1993 Los Angeles Times article that follows describes the subsequent failure of some geothermal development in California.

Geothermal Energy: The Power of Letting Off Steam

By Kenneth F. Weaver

The smell of brimstone hung on the air. Steam vents hissed at me like snakes. Craters of boiling mud seethed and burped; black bubbles formed, swelled, and collapsed with rude plops.

Heat had created a scabrous landscape almost devoid of vegetation and stained with yellow streaks of sulfur and the white crusts of mineral salts. It suggested an outpost of Dante's Inferno—although it bore the more earthly name Laguna Volcano.

Only a short distance away, towering plumes of steam sent a muffled roar to my ears. These plumes marked the location of the new Cerro Prieto power plant in northern Mexico. The heat that drove the electric generators of Cerro Prieto was the same heat that had created the wasteland at my feet. It was the terrible heat from inside the earth.

The cold, hard crust of our planet gives little hint of that awesome heat, chiefly the result of decay of radioactive elements. Only where the heat leaks through rifts in the crust —in the molten lava of volcanoes, the hot water of geysers and hot springs, or the steam of fumaroles—does man begin to suspect the titanic forces beneath his feet.

Yet most of earth's 260 billion cubic miles of rock are at or above the melting point—about 2200° Fahrenheit (1200° Celsius). Donald E. White of the United States Geological Survey estimates that just the top 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) of the crust hold 3 x 1028 (300 million billion billion) calories of heat.

"We would have to burn 2,000 times the world's entire supply of coal to generate that much heat," says White.

At a time when fossil fuels—especially oil and gas—are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive, and when nuclear power faces an uncertain future, such a prodigious energy source cannot be ignored, even if much of it can never be used. And, indeed, geothermal ("earth heat") energy has become a warm new prospect. At present nine nations have begun tapping that resource to generate electricity Several, such as Iceland, France, Hungary, and New Zealand, heat homes with the earth's hot water and use the heat for industrial purposes as well.

Despite the magnitude of the earth's heat, capturing it on a large scale for man's use still presents a number of technological and economic problems.

But a few years from now we may well be scrambling for every kilowatt of power we can get. Geothermal energy may then be more available and very welcome. Already it provides more electricity than the world extracts from the sun's heat or from wind power—two other promising sources.

The Federal Government's Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) thinks geothermal energy is so important that the agency has included 101 million dollars in its fiscal 1978 budget to encourage development. That's 84 percent more than in fiscal 1977.

And industry is more than mildly interested. In January 1974 the Bureau of Land Management opened up large areas of public lands in the West for geothermal exploration. The demand for leases recalled the frenzy of the Oklahoma land rush. In the first month, nearly 2,500 applications were filed for leases covering 5,280,000 acres in 11 states. Both wildcatters and giant oil companies are beginning to drill on these lands, looking not for oil or gas but for heat.

How much contribution can geothermal energy make? Estimates of its potential in the United States vary widely. Some enthusiasts have suggested that the Southwest could in time get all its energy from geothermal. Some very conservative observers doubt that geothermal could ever provide more than one percent of U.S. power needs.

The truth probably lies between these extremes. A 1975 study by the U.S. Geological Survey foresees 12,000 megawatts (12,000,000 kilowatts) of electricity from hydrothermal reserves, lasting for at least 30 years, at present prices and with current technology. (A thousand megawatts is about the energy needed for a city of a million persons.)

The USGS further estimates that perhaps 12 times this much hot-water energy remains to be discovered in the United States, or awaits higher prices or improved technology before it will be economical to develop.

By far the simplest, cheapest, and best form of geothermal energy comes from the ground in the form of dry steam. It can be used directly to drive turbine generators with a minimum of problems.

Unfortunately, dry steam occurs in only a few places. As Morton Smith of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory puts it, "Dry steam is a geological freak." But this highly desirable freak is found in Japan and Italy, and in the United States at The Geysers, in California's Sonoma County about 90 miles north of San Francisco.

I found The Geysers after following the tortuous windings of an old stagecoach road deep into the Mayacmas Mountains. Miles of pipelines streaking along the sides of Big Sulphur Canyon, vapor billowing from rows of generating-plant cooling towers, and roaring jets of steam from vent valves gave the valley an awesome appearance.

The Geysers must have been a frightening place to William Bell Elliott when he discovered its fumaroles in 1847 while hunting a grizzly bear. The explorer-surveyor was overwhelmed by the sight of steam pouring from fissures along the steep canyon.

"I thought I had come upon the gates of hell itself," he told friends.

Today at The Geysers, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, drawing on a hundred wells operated by Union Oil, produces 500 megawatts of electricity, about half of San Francisco's needs. More wells and new generator units should increase output to about 900 megawatts by mid-1979.

By the 1990's PG and E hopes to develop The Geysers to a level of 2,000 megawatts—almost the capacity of two Hoover Dams or two large fossil-fuel or nuclear power plants.

The earth is stingy with its natural steam. Aside from The Geysers, dry steam has been found in the United States only in Yellowstone National Park, where law forbids development.

But earth's heat is much more readily available in the form of very hot water under pressure. All along the world's earthquake and volcano belts, pockets of magma, or molten rock, have worked their way close to the surface. Water filtering into permeable rock layers above these pockets is heated—often far above the normal boiling point.

Sometimes the superheated water forces its way out as hot springs or geysers. More often, trapped by an impermeable cap rock above it, the water becomes a subterranean caldron under extremely high pressure, waiting to be tapped by wells.

Mexico's Cerro Prieto, not far south of the border city of Mexicali, is a prime example of tapping such a reservoir. As the 570°F water rises to the wellhead, the pressure drops and the water flashes, or boils. About 20 percent turns to steam, which is separated out and piped to the generator turbines. The remaining hot water roars through discharge pipes into large ponds, but it could be used for industrial or household purposes.

Just to the north of Cerro Prieto, in the Imperial Valley of California, I found intensive interest in geothermal water. Signs at the airport predict that this rich agricultural region might become the nation's teakettle as well as its salad bowl.

Oddly enough, were it not for the higher country around it, the Imperial Valley would be an inland sea and therefore worthless for either agriculture or geothermal energy. A flagpole in Calipatria, which advertises itself as the lowest city in the Western Hemisphere, raises its tip 184 feet, to the level the sea would reach if it could get into the valley.

And, strangely, this extremely flat valley, resting upon vast reservoirs of subterranean waters, would be desert were it not for irrigation water brought in from the Colorado River. "Rain for rent" reads the sign of one firm that provides sprinkler systems.

Amid the interminable checkerboard fields of lettuce, cantaloupes, and cotton, the endless rows of baled alfalfa, and the occasional palm trees, evidences of a fledgling geothermal industry are becoming steadily more apparent. At places like Heber and Brawley, Niland and East Mesa, drilling rigs grind day and night searching for hot water. Dozens of completed wells tell of successful searches.

And at Niland, near the Salton Sea, a test facility takes boiling brine from the earth and simulates the conditions of a power plant. This facility, a venture of ERDA and San Diego Gas & Electric in cooperation with the Magma Power Company, tests materials, methods of handling hot brine, and techniques for extracting heat.

I use the word “brine” advisedly, for geothermal waters are sometimes highly saline. Hot water under pressure can dissolve and carry astonishing amounts of salts and minerals from the rocks.

In most places, to be sure, the concentration of such materials is quite low—even much less than seawater's 3.5 percent. But in the Imperial Valley, which holds some of the nation's most important high-temperature geothermal resources, salinity can run high. At Niland it reaches the incredible level of 20 to 30 percent dissolved solids. Such concentrated brine creates major problems. It can be violently corrosive and erosive, swiftly eating away turbine blades and nozzles. Even worse, the minerals precipitate rapidly as temperature and pressure are reduced. I have seen pipes choked by an inch-thick layer of hard rusty scale that deposited in only a few hundred hours of operation.

"The total energy in the Niland area is about equal to the recoverable energy in Alaska's North Slope," an ERDA official, Eric H. Willis, once told me. "But how do you stop it from having arteriosclerosis?"

Until recently these problems seemed likely to block geothermal development in parts of the valley. But new developments alter the prospects.

At the Niland test facility, a four-stage heat exchanger offers one solution. When heat is drawn from the hot brine in several stages instead of all at once, and when the pressure is lowered gradually, scaling is sharply cut.

At ERDA's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory near San Francisco, engineers have developed a new process known as "total flow," which uses a well's entire output, liquid and vapor, to drive specially designed turbines. As part of this work, they believe they have solved the scaling problem by treating the brine with hydrochloric acid.

"Under the worst conditions we add only about 200 parts per million to the brine." Roy Austin told me. "This will probably cost less than two-tenths of a cent a kilowatt-hour. And we get absolutely no sealing in the nozzles. They come out so clean we can still see the machine marks. We have also tested materials that appear promisingly resistant under these conditions."

So far the Imperial Valley seems to offer the nation's richest prospects for geothermal hot-water development. Pilot power plants are already on engineers' drawing boards. By the 1980's the industry expects that imperial Valley electricity will be flowing into the grid, just as it already does at The Geysers.

But the Imperial Valley holds only a few of the 106 geothermal systems in the Western States that have been identified by the Geological Survey as KGRA's (Known Geothermal Resource Areas). Thirty-seven of these yield water at temperatures above 300°F—hot enough for electric-power generation.

For example, near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Union Oil Company has brought in a number of productive wells inside the Valles Caldera, an enormous volcanic basin some 13 miles across. Union is now negotiating with potential purchasers of the steam.

Around Roosevelt Hot Springs in southwestern Utah, five major companies and several smaller ones are probing a very important new reservoir. On the slopes above an ancient lake bed, amid sagebrush, yellow-flowered rabbit bush, and juniper, drill rigs are sprouting and geologists are measuring heat flow and electrical properties to find likely spots for wells.

At places on this Utah site, one does not have to go far below the surface to find evidence of heat. On one claim I found a prospector's trench scooped into the bank of a wash. Idly curious, I stooped over to scratch at the bottom of the trench. I had flicked away no more than half an inch of soil when I jerked my hand back. I had burned my fingers as surely as if they had touched a hot kettle.

Temperatures of the water from some of the Utah wells exceed 500°F (260°C). But geothermal water in many other places is nowhere near as hot—not even up to the 300°F regarded as minimum for efficient production of electricity. Can these cooler waters be used?

I found abundant answers in Iceland, whose volcanic hills and rifts lie directly on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. There, where upwelling magma is steadily forcing apart the crustal plates, the inner fires of earth are always close at hand.

When the Vikings first approached Iceland, they saw geothermal steam rising from the area now occupied by Reykjavik. They thought it was smoke, hence the name Reykjavik (Smoking Bay).

As recently as three decades ago, Reykjavik was indeed smoky. Early photographs show it as a filthy, black-stained town shrouded by smoke from coal fires.

Then geothermal energy came to the rescue. Today virtually all the buildings in the Reykjavik area are heated by geothermal water. Some 115,000 persons enjoy one of the cleanest cities in the world.

Simple sheds covering the wellheads, a few low storage tanks, and raised concrete conduits carrying the major pipelines are the only outward evidence of this splendid heating system. The cost? The average householder pays from 130 to 160 dollars a year for heating and hot water—on an island that touches the Arctic Circle!

With two scientists from Iceland's National Energy Authority—Dr. Stefán Arnórsson, a geochemist, and Dr. Kristján Saemundsson, a geologist—I visited other communities in Iceland whose very existence depends on geothermal springs and wells.

Our road traversed a huge lava flow and we passed between volcanic hills that had pushed up under the ice sheet some 20,000 years ago. We saw fumaroles steaming in the snow and little Icelandic ponies standing with their tails to the wind.

Dropping below an escarpment, we came into the valley town of Hveragerdi (Garden of Hot Springs). A thousand souls have settled here since the first house was built in 1928. As in most geothermal towns, escaping steam is ever present. At the center of town, a violently boiling hot spring and an abandoned borehole that erupts at intervals are fenced off for safety.

Large greenhouse complexes make efficient use of Hveragerdi's geothermal water. I visited one owned by Ingimar Sigurdsson. Outside, the sharp winds of February had slashed through any coat; inside, I found springlike temperatures.

The gardener picked a rosebud from one of 50,000 plants. "I'll have blooms," he said, "from now till mid-December."

The borehole for the greenhouse goes down only 2,000 feet, he told us. Water and steam come up without aid of pumps or electricity. The rejected water goes into the river after heating a swimming pool.

Dr. Arnósson told me that Iceland is turning its natural heat more and more to purposes other than space heating. One farmer we visited, for example, uses hot water to heat air to dry his hay.

In the northern part of the island, an industrial plant takes diatomaceous material from a lake bed, dries it with geothermal steam, and produces diatomite for use in filters, insulation, and other industrial purposes.

In addition, Iceland is beginning to develop hot water for electric power. Since much of the water is below 300°F (150°C), and thus will not produce efficient amounts of steam, the Icelanders have considered using the vapor-turbine cycle technique: The water would heat low-boiling-point liquids such as Freon and isobutane, and the resulting vapor would drive the turbine generators.

This technique is being used successfully on the Soviet peninsula of Kamchatka in the northwest Pacific Ocean to supply power to the Paratunka State Farms.

Geothermal heating in the United States goes back even further than in Iceland. Some 350 households in Klamath Falls. Oregon, have long had individual hot-water wells. In Boise, Idaho, homes along Warm Springs Avenue have drawn hot water from a central well for nearly a century. And today, in Boise, the Idaho state government is considering the investment of more than three million dollars to bring geothermal hot water to heat the state university, the capitol, and a number of other state buildings.

Two especially rich sources of geothermal energy glimmer in the future, if they can be developed economically. One, known as "geopressured zones," involves large hot-water reservoirs in the Texas-Louisiana area, both onshore and off. These hot waters, at depths of two to three miles, are trapped below thick sedimentary deposits under abnormally high pressures.

Drilling in such areas is difficult and costly. But dissolved in the waters are vast amounts of methane—the chief ingredient of the natural gas we sought so avidly during the deep freeze of last winter. It is estimated that the potential of the geopressured resource is as much as 115,000 megawatts for 30 years, with the methane of equal value for power. (Total U.S. power capacity last year was about 550,000 megawatts.)

As prices for other forms of energy rise, it may become economically profitable to extract geopressured water and gas.

The other far-out possibility is called "hot dry rock." It refers to many regions of heated rock near the surface that lack reservoirs of water to carry away the heat. Such deposits, much more common than the hot-water reservoirs already being exploited, are found even in the eastern U.S.

Scientists at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico believe that this heat can be tapped with water from the surface. Their technique is to force cold water down a well to cause the heated rocks to fracture, circulate the water through the network of fractures, then bring it back to the surface through a second well.

To test this idea, the Los Alamos scientists have been making test drills on the Jemez Plateau near the Valles Caldera. Two holes 250 feet apart, reaching depths of approximately 10,000 feet, have been successfully connected. Fracturing experiments to increase the hot-rock area exposed to the water flow seem promising.

Like all other energy sources, geothermal offers both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it is relatively clean, there is no fuel to buy, and the reserves (of hot water, if not of steam) are thought to be long lasting.

On the negative side, critics note that the best geothermal deposits seem to be localized in the West. However, recent discoveries point to rich potential in the eastern United States as well.

Further, the capital investment for developing geothermal energy is high, and, under present taxes and regulations, prospecting is somewhat limited. The Federal Government is meeting this problem in part by providing for government-guaranteed loans and tax credits.

Then there is the problem of subsidence. If large amounts of water are drawn out of the earth, will the earth sink in that area? The answers are uncertain, and some geothermal plants avoid the problem by injecting the water into wells after extracting its heat.

Finally, there is the problem of pollution. The odor of rotten eggs hangs over some geothermal sites because of hydrogen sulfide gas. More serious is the presence of poisonous arsenic and boron in geothermal waters. But this problem is usually avoided if waste waters are re-injected into wells.

All things considered, then, mining the earth for heat may offer a highly desirable substitute for gas and oil in the not too distant future.

When experts talk about enormous amounts of energy, they often use the term "quads." One quad is a quadrillion (1015) British thermal units, or BTU's. The United States last year used on the order of 74 quads of energy.

I asked Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., then head of ERDA, how he evaluated the contribution of geothermal energy in quads.

"By the year 2000," he said, "geothermal energy might well amount to as much as four quads, and by 2020 as much as fourteen quads. That may not sound like much, but if you think of it in terms of oil, every two quads a year represents a million barrels a day."

And that's not peanuts!

Source: Weaver, Kenneth. “Geothermal Energy: The Power of Letting off Steam.” National Geographic, October 1977.

Ghost Plants Are Legacy of State's Geothermal Fiasco 

Energy: Haste made $450 million in waste at two hurriedly built sites.

Steam fields proved inadequate.

Los Angeles Times

June 16, 1993

By Virginia Ellis

All the signs of human activity are still there. Papers and manuals litter tables and desks. Handwritten charts cover some of the walls. Signs warn that "Ear Protection Is Required" to protect workers from the deafening noise.

Everything is there—except the people.

Echoing through the silent building are the footsteps of Glen Gordon, last manager of the state Department of Water Resources' Bottle Rock Geothermal Power Plant before it was shut down in 1990. Disappointment is etched in his face. "It was a beautiful plant," he says reverently. "Those of us who worked here were pretty proud of it."

Nestled among the lush green hills above Napa Valley, Bottle Rock and its sister plant a few miles away stand as towering monuments to government miscalculations and mistakes. Bottle Rock has not produced a kilowatt of electricity in three years. Its sister, the South Geysers Power Plant, never opened.

When the revenue bonds on the plants are finally paid in 2024, water users will have sunk more than $450 million into the two projects, making them the state's most expensive white elephants. The customers of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will have shouldered 80% of the cost.

The two plants were conceived with the loftiest of goals and intentions in the 1970s when clean, cheap sources of energy were being sought to offset high-priced OPEC oil.

The state, often criticized for taking too long to act, moved with such speed on the geothermal project that it was able to move from conception to finished plant in less than a decade. Critics later complained that this was one instance when government moved too fast.

In the haste to bring the facilities on-line, government officials—especially in the case of South Geysers—too quickly accepted the word of geologists and private developers who said that steam was plentiful enough at the sites to run the facilities for 30 years.

As it turned out, there was not enough steam to run South Geysers at all. At Bottle Rock, it lasted five years.

Hidden by hills and virtually inaccessible to casual passersby, the plants are largely forgotten, located near the community of Cobb, population 1,477. Many residents who own vacation cabins in nearby hamlets do not know the plants are there. Once a year they merit eight paragraphs in the Department of Water Resources 370-page annual report on the State Water Project called Bulletin 132.

This anonymity contrasts sharply with the high expectations that once surrounded them.

In the heyday of the geothermal movement, the plant sites were visited frequently by top state officials—including once by Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., who brought along an entourage of reporters and photographers to record optimistic predictions of the great potential of geothermal steam.

The impetus for the Bottle Rock and South Geysers plants came in the mid-1970s when America was reeling from the shock of the OPEC oil embargo and spiraling energy costs. For California government, the need for alternative energy was particularly pressing because long-term contracts providing inexpensive electrical power for the massive State Water Project were soon to expire and officials feared large price hikes.

The water project, a critical source of water for 20 million residents, requires billions of kilowatts of electricity each year to carry water from Oroville Dam in Northern California to the end of the state's 444-mile aqueduct at Lake Perris in Riverside County.

Geothermal power seemed an ideal solution. California is one of the few places in the world with large underground steam reservoirs, areas where underground water comes in contact with molten rock near the Earth's surface. To tap the energy, wells are drilled and the steam piped to a power plant where it turns turbines that generate electricity.

The richest of California's steam reservoirs was believed to be the geysers, a geothermal area 90 miles north of San Francisco that was discovered in 1847. Commercial power production began here in 1960 and many companies, including Pacific Gas & Electric Co., had successful plants.

"There was this tantalizing idea that if you develop the geysers, you could find a renewable, reliable resource where the cost would be steady and you could break away from the price escalations and uncertainty of the oil market," said Richard Maullin, who served as Brown's first chairman of the state Energy Commission.

Hoping to get at least one plant on line before power contracts expired in 1983, the state quickly floated bonds to finance construction of two plants. The bonds would be paid off by customers of the State Water Project, and the project's largest customer and biggest user of energy was the MWD.

The plans called for the state to construct and manage the plants, but the steam to run them would be purchased from private companies that would develop, operate and maintain adjacent steam fields.

To determine the availability of steam at the site of the plant, the state Department of Water Resources hastily entered into contracts with private geologists to analyze the steam field at the Bottle Rock site.

Department officials say their reports confirmed that steam would be available to run the plant at its proposed 55-megawatt capacity for 30 years.

Eugene Boudreau, a Santa Rosa geologist who has spent 10 years researching the projects in preparation for a book, maintains that is only part of the story. Although some reports were optimistic, he said others carried warnings that should have alerted officials to investigate the field further.

"But the state turned a blind eye to the negative information and particularly to the lack of information," Boudreau said.

Construction started in 1981 on the $122-million Bottle Rock plant-a facility that state officials boasted would be unlike any other at the geysers. Power plants constructed by private industry often are squat buildings of corrugated metal. The state's three-story structure of reinforced concrete had dark wood paneling in the reception area, a herringbone design etched in the concrete and reflecting glass windows on the top floor to give a panoramic view of the hills.

"We asked the department to consider a simple design," said Joseph Summers, an engineer who represents several water districts served by the state project. "But they wanted to build this symbolic stuff. They were hellbent on having something very elaborate that they could show off." Another official estimated that the state could have saved at least $20 million if the plant had been less ornate.

As construction of Bottle Rock got under way in Lake County, the state moved ahead with its plans to build another plant a few miles away in Sonoma County. The state relied on assurances from the private steam field operator, Geothermal Kinetics Inc., that there would be enough steam available to support the plant.

A later state audit found that the Department of Water Resources insisted that it did not have time for an independent analysis, even though the agency knew P G & E was having problems "locating enough steam for one of (its) plants on property adjacent to the South Geysers property."

As it turned out, the contractor's assurances were based on the drilling of three test wells, all in the same northwest quadrant of the steam field. The wells showed the presence of steam, but they told nothing about its availability on the remainder of the property.

During construction, the drilling yielded bad news. In 1985, the state decided to halt construction, determining that there was not enough steam to run the plant. By then, $55 million had been spent on construction. Today, South Geysers stands as a shell, completed on the outside but unfinished on the inside. Millions of dollars in unused equipment still sits in crates on the ground floor. Some has been sold to the Bechtel Corp. to recoup about $5 million.

Even as the state was throwing in the towel on South Geysers, it was formally opening the doors on what appeared to be its success story—the completed Bottle Rock plant. For the first year, the plant seemed to meet all expectations, pouring out electricity at the promised 55 megawatts-enough power to serve the needs of a city the size of Santa Rosa.

Then the steam field began to run into problems. First, a corrosive element in the steam caused problems with the piping. Then there was an ominous drop in pressure. Meanwhile, the price of oil had begun to drop dramatically. Suddenly power purchased from the private utilities was cheaper than that generated at the geothermal plant.

By the end of the decade, production at the plant had dropped to seven megawatts. Under pressure from water contractors, the state decided in September, 1990, that Bottle Rock should be closed and mothballed. The plant closed, having never generated enough electricity to offset the annual maintenance, operational and financing costs.

Defenders of the state's geothermal venture say the failure of the plants was hard to anticipate at a time when steam field testing procedures had not been perfected and much was still unknown about the behavior of steam reservoirs.

"In hindsight, you're looking at a program that is not successful," said John Pacheco, the department's senior engineer for water resources. "But economics played a big role and the crystal ball of the late 1970s … did not predict the drop in oil prices."

V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy and Efficiency and Renewable Technology, an joint industry-environmental effort, said the state was an early casualty of a new industry that has learned from its mistakes. He said geothermal steam has proved to be a relatively clean form of energy and today generates 6.5% of California's electricity from plants located at the geysers, Mono-Long Valley, the Imperial Valley and Coso Hot Springs in the high desert near Death Valley.

The geysers in Sonoma and Lake counties were overdeveloped and the state chose to locate its plants at the edge of the receding reservoir; most of the plants that continue to operate are in the center of the reservoir, White said.

He said that despite the state's experience, geothermal energy remains a viable alternative for government. In fact, he said, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plans to develop its leases at the Coso geothermal area.

As for the state, it is no longer interested in geothermal power production and would like to sell the plants, said the state's Pacheco. He said a Santa Rosa company has shown interest in reopening Bottle Rock.

Gordon, the former Bottle Rock manager who still works for the state and occasionally inspects the plant, believes that if new wells are drilled and old ones are reworked, the Bottle Rock plant could operate again. "The problem was never with the plant," he said, "and I hope it operates again someday."

For that reason, Gordon said, everything at Bottle Rock was left intact-signs still on the walls, telephones in place and manuals on the desks. All in hopes that someday somebody else would run it again.

Source: Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1993.