Casa Diablo IV EIR approved
Schade blames MCWD for delay.
The controversial Ormat Casa Diablo IV geothermal plant project near Mammoth Lakes took a step closer to breaking ground after Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District approved the project’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) earlier this week.
The project had stalled over Mammoth Community Water District (MCWD) concerns about potential impacts to Mammoth’s groundwater supply. MCWD expressed concerns that water export from the geothermal region could overheat or degrade the cold water above. That cold water supplies about 70 percent of daily water use in Mammoth, according to MCWD General Manager Pat Hayes.
MCWD contended that Ormat needed a firm monitoring and mitigation plan in place before moving forward with the project, but the two parties had been unable to reach an agreement on the details.
“A year ago, the project went to my governing board for approval,” recalled Ted Schade, Great Basin Air Pollution Control Officer, and the certifier of the EIR. “I said the parties needed to come together to come up with a monitoring plan … After a year of effort, the parties agreed on four sentences of an objective monitoring plan. It was obvious to me that they weren’t getting anywhere.”
Schade placed the blame for the holdup on the Water District. “It was clear they were dragging their feet,” he said, in spite of what he called “good suggestions” from Ormat and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). “I believe Ormat was willing to take reasonable action, [but] nothing was ever good enough for the Water District,” he said.
Schade stressed that he always believed the EIR was adequate, and could have been approved at any time. He also noted that Great Basin “is not the entity to be refereeing the development of a groundwater monitoring plan,” as Great Basin deals with air quality issues.
“I believe that BLM is the appropriate agency to oversee development of the plan and Great Basin will rely on BLM to ensure a plan is developed, implemented and enforced that continues to protect Mammoth’s water supply,” Schade wrote in a statement to the parties involved in the dispute. “Great Basin will not issue geothermal well permits in the project area until a monitoring plan is in place.”
Schade said the BLM continues to require a monitoring and mitigation plan from Ormat. BLM Project Manager Collin Reinhardt confirmed this.
“In our decision for the project, the BLM clearly recognized the concern expressed by the MCWD and the importance of ongoing data collection and monitoring related to the municipal water supply for the Mammoth Lakes community,” he said. “Therefore, we required the development of a cooperative shallow groundwater monitoring plan as a condition of approval for the Casa Diablo IV project.”
However, at a recent Contractors Association meeting, Pat Hayes made it clear that MCWD believes these shallow wells are not adequate to monitor changes to groundwater caused by geothermal pumping.
Reinhardt said the monitoring plan would require the collection of data on fluid pressure, fluid temperature, and fluid chemistry from the cold, warm, and hot hydrologic systems within the Long Valley Caldera.
“Also, the BLM and USGS plan to collect baseline aerial thermography data and diffuse soil gas data in the project area to help track any potential changes in land-surface temperature and soil carbon dioxide flux that may relate to geothermal development,” he said. “All of these data will assist the BLM in managing use of the geothermal reservoir and taking corrective action, if needed, in order to protect the Mammoth Lakes municipal water supply as well as other resources in the Long Valley Caldera.”
In spite of these assurances, Mammoth Community Water District was less than pleased with Great Basin’s approval of the Casa Diablo IV EIR. “Mr. Schade’s decision to certify the EIR for Casa Diablo IV in advance of the development and implementation of a monitoring and mitigation plan to protect the region’s water supply goes against his previous assurances and the direction provided by Great Basin Board members,” stated a Water District press release this week. “The decision also ignores mounting questions and concerns raised by the community and nearly all of the region’s elected officials regarding the project’s impacts.”
The press release went on to note that Senator Dianne Feinstein and local Congress members Paul Cook and John Garamendi, echoed these concerns.
But MCWD’s opposition to, and Great Basin’s approval of the project’s EIR may well be moot whenever Ormat puts together a monitoring and mitigation plan. As Schade said in his statement to the involved parties, “I am convinced that, even if a monitoring plan is developed, the EIR will be litigated. Although Patrick Hayes has assured me that a comprehensive monitoring plan would prevent litigation by the MCWD, it will not stop the other parties from litigating.”
Schade was referring to ‘greenmailers’ Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) and California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURE), two organizations that previously sued Ormat over a replacement project for its existing geothermal plant.
Organizations like LIUNA and CURE are known statewide for suing renewable energy projects in the hopes of holding up those projects and forcing a negotiation with developers to employ union laborers (see “Ormat defeats ‘greenmailers’”).
In February of this year, after successfully defeating the LIUNA/CURE lawsuit, Ormat Vice President of Business Development Bob Sullivan appeared resigned to another lawsuit over the proposed Casa Diablo IV project. In spite of the Court’s decision in favor of the replacement project, the lawsuit had put Ormat through three expensive years of litigation, with more years ahead, should LIUNA and CURE turn their attention to Casa Diablo IV.
“It’s not a win-win,” he concluded.
