Main Street

Ray Holley
Last month the New York Times published an article (which was
then reprinted by the local daily) on a new development at the
Geysers Geothermal Project. The gist of the story is that a risky
technique for generating electricity from heat is going to be tried
here in our back yard.
AltaRock Energy is going to drill more than two miles into the
hard rock up at the Geysers, hoping to tap into the immense heat
that’s present far down in the earth. The company wants to fracture
underground rocks and use the released heat to generate green
energy. If it works, it could be a significant source of
electricity not generated by coal or petroleum.
But, the area is also fertile ground for seismic activity. In
fact, earthquake experts say quake activity has increased in the
Geysers in the last six years since wastewater from Santa Rosa has
been pumped underground to generate steam.
The Times story points out that AltaRock filed a seismic report
as part of its application to drill at the Geysers, but neglected
to mention that its similar project in Switzerland had to shut down
after the deep drilling caused instability in a seismically active
area and a significant earthquake endangered a nearby town.
Seismic sensors in the vicinity of the Geysers can register
dozens of small quakes a day. Rural residents are used to feeling
shakes, rattles and rolls, and repairing cracked foundations. What
happens when a seismically active area is artificially expanded by
fracturing stable rock deeper underground?
The idea of generating clean energy from a natural resource is
attracting lots of interest and financing, but I worry that there’s
too much emphasis on the bottom line. A truly renewable resource
has to be utilized at an appropriate rate.
For example, I often hear speculation that the Santa Rosa
wastewater isn’t being used correctly. It’s being pumped into
relatively shallow rock beds, and it may be cooling off those
rocks. If you pump the water in slowly, the rocks will stay warm,
drawing heat from below, but you don’t generate as much power. Too
much water too fast yields more green electricity but may cool down
the resource permanently, necessitating riskier techniques like the
AltaRock project.
I learned a hard lesson recently – being a wife is a lot tougher
than it looks. My sweetie had surgery three weeks ago to repair a
painful situation in her foot. Doctor’s orders were for two weeks
of bed rest.
It’s hard to keep a strong woman down, and Lynn struggled with
the directive of inactivity, but she’s a trooper. She read books,
watched a few videos, worked on her laptop and tried not to stare a
hole in the ceiling.
I won’t win any nurse prizes, but I did OK. I brought her frozen
peas to put on her foot, kept her fed, brought her a root beer
float once in a while, smoothed her sheets and generally hovered. I
only banged into her bandaged foot a few times, and she was
gracious about it after she yelped in pain.
What surprised me was how much work it is to take care of a
house by yourself. I’ve always done what I thought was my share of
the housework. I can operate a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, a
dish towel and a dust rag, but I never paid much attention to the
finer details.
I noticed that Lynn threw the towels in the wash every few days,
but it wasn’t until I hadn’t washed my own towel for a week that I
figured out why the bathroom smelled sour.
The kitchen floor collects grit and dust bunnies, and you have
to sweep it. A lot. When you comb your hair after a shower, some of
that hair floats down to the floor. After a couple of days you have
a little hair armada drifting around. It has to be swept up
too.
And the soap dish! Our kitchen sink has a little blue dish with
a plastic gizmo, upon which rests a bar of soap. The gizmo has
little fingers that elevate the soap and allow it to drain into the
blue dish. Oh man, that thing gets funky. It gets a creepy sort of
soap juice scum in the bottom, and you have to take the darn thing
apart and clean it.
And, don’t get me started on what collects in the bathtub
drain.
That crumbling glory of an old house at the corner of Fitch and
North Streets has finally sold, and the buyers plan to restore and
enhance it. Phillip Engel and Mark Goff are nice guys, and they
seem to know what they’re getting into. I’ve seen the plans, and it
should be a nice project.
Healdsburger Nathan Landers, the son of Scott Landers and former
City Councilwoman Leah Gold, is keeping busy these days. Five years
ago he graduated from Healdsburg High School, and today he’s the
Press Secretary for California Congresswoman Grace Napolitano.
Our little town continues to pop up in the world of
merchandising. An Internet shopping network called Kaboodle is
offering the “Healdsburg Sideboard,” a wooden cabinet: “Named for
the idyllic California town of Healdsburg” and described as
capturing “the rustic yet sophisticated attitude of wine country.”
The cabinet is alleged to be “Small enough to fit comfortably in
any space, yet roomy enough to house any items you need close at
hand …”
Ray Holley is rustic but not sophisticated, roomy but not small
enough to fit comfortably in any space. He can be reached at
[email protected].