Two energy companies are preparing to pay up to $100,000 a year to neighbors who have complained that Lake County geothermal plants are responsible for a sharp increase in earthquakes at The Geysers.
Calpine Corp., the largest producer of electricity at The Geysers, tonight will announce an agreement to provide $70,000 annually to residents in Anderson Springs and Cobb Valley.
The Northern California Power Agency, which operates two plants at The Geysers, tentatively has offered to pay Anderson Springs residents up to $30,000 a year.
Calpine said it expects to continue the payments for years to come. Efforts to reach Northern California Power Agency for comment were unsuccessful.
Calpine said it agrees with critics that its operations at The Geysers have triggered a flurry of small quakes in the region. However, it does not believe the quakes are responsible for damage reported to nearby homes, said Mitch Stark, senior geoscientist at Calpine.
The company has agreed to create a community fund for residents of Anderson Springs and Cobb Valley simply because it wants to be "a good neighbor," Stark said. It is not an admission of liability for damage to their homes, he said.
"It's really just a general community fund," Stark said.
Calpine, which owns 19 of 21 operating geothermal plants at The Geysers, has established similar funds in other California communities adjacent to its plants.
Jeff Gospe, a part-time Anderson Springs resident who has organized efforts to win compensation for the quakes, called the payments "a good start." "It's a step in the right direction," he said. However, Gospe said the money will pay for only a fraction of the damage that residents' homes have suffered from the quakes.
Under a plan that will be unveiled tonight at a community meeting, Calpine will pledge to pay $70,000 annually into a fund. Half of the money would go to Anderson Springs, which has around 400 full-time residents, and the other half to Cobb Valley, which has around 3,000 residents.
Calpine intends to make a similar-sized payment each year into the fund, Stark said.
Residents will not be asked to waive their rights to file a lawsuit against Calpine if they accept the money, Stark said. However, Calpine might reconsider its plans to continue payments into the fund if the company was sued by residents over quake damage, he said.
The money will be distributed by two committees representing each community, Lake County Supervisor Ed Robey said. The committees - comprised of county officials, energy company officials and area residents - will decide how to spend the money, he said.
The committees could set up a program to fix cracks in driveways, add streetlights or give cash directly to residents, Robey said.
Meanwhile, Lake County is considering a plan to contribute money to the community fund. The county received almost $500,000 this year in federal geothermal mining royalties and is considering sharing some of it with Anderson Springs and Cobb Valley, Robey said. In the past, some of that money paid for a new water supply system for Anderson Springs, Robey said.
The Lake County Board of Supervisors is expected to meet in December to decide whether it will contribute money, he said.
For decades, Anderson Springs has been one of the most active seismic areas in California, with around 4,500 earthquakes of magnitude 0.9 or larger last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Seismic activity has jumped 30 percent since December, when Calpine began injecting Santa Rosa wastewater into the underground steamfields at The Geysers. Calpine has acknowledged the injection of wastewater and extraction of steam to generate electricity is responsible for the increase in micro-quakes.
Most people cannot feel earthquakes of magnitude 2.0 or less, according to the USGS. However, Gospe and other Anderson Springs residents contend the tiny quakes feel much stronger in their community, which is surrounded by the geothermal fields and located in a deep valley, placing it close to the quakes' centers.
Gospe said Calpine should take responsibility for damage to homes in Anderson Springs. Residents want money to retrofit older homes, subsidize electric service and install a sewer system that would prevent aging septic systems from leaking into the creeks, he said.
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