HARNESSING GEYSERS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 14 July 1925, Page 2

HARNESSING GEYSERS

"MADCAP SCHEME" SUCCEEDS

STEAM WITHOUT COAJ

PROJECT IN CALIFORNIA

l' rom California comes a- suggestion that New Zealand has a. valuable soir'et* ot power in the Bay of Pleat), winch is now going to waste. In the Geysers Caiivon. or Devil's Gulch, California, tiu'V are driving electric turbine generators horn huge steam wells in the ground. and the suggestion is that, in many respects, the geyser region of Yellowstone Park closely resembles that at Rotorua; and probably Rotorua possesses. natural power possibilities similar to those of the Devil's Gulch. Rotorua and the Devil s Gulch were regarded a con pie of years ago as two of nature's wonderlands. Since then, at tho Devil's

Gulch, there has been a striking transformation. The American instinct for turning everything to account ha,a illuminated the town of Ilealdsburg, fifteen miles distant, by a network of electric lights. Lutlioi Burbank, the plant, wizard, and many of his lesser contemporaries have had a look at the experiment; and the shyness of capitalists and well borers to go into the madcap scheme has: changed into something very like admiration for Hie temerity of Mr John D. Grant, who bored the first well.

It is l , of course, another way of get ting nature to do man's work for him while, he site by and enjoys the contemplation of his enterprise. ’There is nothing supernatural about it. Nature sup plies the steam ready made from some cavernous depth under the earth, ll issues through a huge pipe, and gives a steady flow and a constant pressure of 60 to 70 pounds, with a temperature at the outlet nozzles of 335 degrees Fahrenheit .

COAL EXHAUSTION BUGABOO Coal exhaustion, set up every once in a. while ar. a bugaboo to the world, pulled down and raised again, leaves men, meanwhile,, in perpetual doubt about the real limit's to their resources, and there is nlwavs the chance in the

background that someone, will hit, upon tho secret, of tho ''atom" and put the whole world on the road to everlasting happiness. While watcrlalls tiro harnessed to produce "white coal. the tides are being cominercialised hr power, and the underground steam chain her is at last penetrated, !oik a; u never rjuilo able (o real iso Unit prospect. Underground .steam re-oOVi'cer. arn not scattered up and down the land as plentifully as waterfall sites; but the little scheme opirating in .Sonoma County, Gh^tnrnia. shows that natural steam harnessed by man s incessant ingenuity, has been roaring through 2CO feet of eight-inch iron piping for months past and driving a 35 kilowatt turbine-genera-tor with an unfailing regularity that is seldom reached by the wit of mail. 'There are other countries where subterranean steam could ho successfully exploited, and. in the care of New Zealand especial!)’, the conditions approxi male quite rli.soiy to those ol California. In the Auckland district, adjoining the Bay of Plenty and extending in a southerly direction almost au; oss the province, there is n volcanic district in which many hot springs, geysers, and similar phenomena common to volcanic regions occur. This includes the thermal springs district round Rotorua.