EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part 2 in a three-part series on geothermal energy, its availability in the West and the implications in Greater Yellowstone.
If you’ve seen Old Faithful, the world’s most famous geyser, you’ve witnessed the power of geothermal energy in Yellowstone National Park. But just as smoke knows no boundaries between state or country borders, so too does thermal power beneath Earth’s surface. And in interconnected environments like the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the potential impacts of geothermal energy production may extend beyond the confines of a drill site.
Decades ago, Church Universal and Triumphant developed a cult-like following after its leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, who fancied herself a reincarnation of Marie Antoinette and Queen Guinevere. In preparation for the prophesied Armageddon, the New-Age church also known as the CUT relocated in 1986 from its Southern California home to a peaceful 12,000-acre parcel in southwestern Montana’s Paradise Valley between Livingston and Gardiner.
That year, the church found itself in hot water after drilling a nearly 500-foot-deep well near LaDuke Hot Springs to provide its members with water naturally heated by geothermal energy. The drilling itself was legal, but extracting groundwater from LaDuke, located 11 miles north of Yellowstone’s Mammoth Hot Springs, raised the question of whether the two springs could be connected and, if so, whether this connection would have a negative impact.
“A test of the discharge of LaDuke spring itself showed an almost one-to-one correlation,” said John Metesh, director of the Montana Bureau of Geology and Mines. “The spring started to dry up while you watched it, and of course, that demonstrated that connection not only across the river, but a potential connection to [Yellowstone National Park] itself.”
In 1993, the Montana Department of Health and Human Services addressed these concerns in its Final Supplement Environmental Impact Statement, which defined a compact agreement that established the impact of groundwater development adjacent to Yellowstone on the hydrothermal systems within the park. As part of the agreement, the Bureau of Mines was required to catalogue all existing cold and warm water wells around the park.
Metesh, who has been working in the field for three decades, says the LaDuke ordeal was an “eye-opening” experience in realizing that pumping groundwater can impact hot springs. Today, Yellowstone Hot Springs, formerly LaDuke, is open to the public but experts like Metesh say the Universal and Triumphant controversy serves as an essential reminder of Yellowstone’s deep underground interconnectedness.
Geothermal features like those in western Montana are recharged by cold water that starts as mountain snowfall. As it melts, the water circulates below Earth’s surface, reaching depths of as far as 10,000 feet. When it’s super-heated deep underground, the water rises through fractured faults in a way that Metesh likens to a “big radiator.”
“If you’re creating an enhanced geothermal system you could inadvertently pull water from one region to another, accidentally impacting prized places in the park.”
Angela Seligman, senior geoscientist, Clean Air Task Force
Now, as the western U.S. eyes geothermal energy as a potential source of electricity, complications like those posed by the Church Universal and Triumphant are “always in the back of people’s minds,” says Angela Seligman, senior geoscientist at the nonprofit environmental organization Clean Air Task Force. Political boundaries, she says, do not define geothermal systems in the Rocky Mountains.
“If we’re thinking about the ecosystem around Yellowstone National Park, and especially if we’re thinking about either a conventional geothermal system or an enhanced geothermal system, you have to be very careful about the groundwater in those regions that may be tied to Yellowstone,” Seligman said. “From a geologic perspective, anywhere within that hydrological basin, if you’re creating an enhanced geothermal system you could inadvertently pull water from one region to another, accidentally impacting prized places in the park.”
Yellowstone, America’s first national park, contains the world’s largest concentration of geothermal features and roughly half of the world’s active geysers. More than 10,000 hot springs, geysers, mud pots and steam vents known as fumaroles make up the park’s hydrothermal system, which continues to change and evolve. Creating an inventory of these features and how they connect is a first step in sustainably tapping into geothermal energy potential in areas outside of the park boundaries.
“To have geothermal projects around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in a way that would not impact the important hydrothermal features found in the park, meticulous mapping would need to be done to ensure the depths where water is being cycled do not have any potential connections to those hydrothermal features,” Seligman said.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports on its website that these assessments are done through field observations, measurements from high-resolution airborne and commercial satellite images, and nighttime thermal infrared images.
Even with the expansion and advancement of geothermal energy, Seligman says it’s essential to consider the broader ecosystems at scale. This requires careful mapping of geological features in a given area and a thorough understanding of the hydrologic basin.
And Congress is the watchdog. The Geothermal Steam Act of 1970 prohibits drilling within the park and requires the Department of the Interior to preserve and monitor hydrothermal features on National Park Service lands. Although the areas surrounding Yellowstone also show potential for energy harnessing, experts warn that deeply connected nearby systems may be impacted in ways geologists don’t yet know. Geothermal developments can decrease flows in nearby geothermal features such as hot springs, and estimating how external drill sites could impact the region remains in question.
Officials have long been aware of the geothermal resources in Greater Yellowstone, but renewed interest and funding have prompted a deeper examination of potential development, Metesh says. Montana government officials are updating their inventory of cold and warm water wells across the state and plan to publish their findings next year.
The report’s conclusions could have significant implications for the future of geothermal energy in Montana and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Stay tuned to Mountain Journal for Part 3 in our geothermal energy series, a historical look at how geothermal power extraction could impact surrounding features.
Click here to read Part 1, “An Underutilized Energy Source.”
