Urban Ecoist

So, after being a resident of the area for two years, I can safely say that Southern California has its fair share of urban ecosystems. Along the coast, and inland for a bit, and except for a pause of housing developments between Southern Orange County and San Diego, the entire Southern California landscape is its own brand of urban living.

That said, I happened upon this news about Southern California Edison (SCE) building an artificial reef for a kelp forest. You see, Southern California Edison is one of the largest power companies out there, providing power to 13 million people in 180 cities in 11 California counties. And one way that SCE powers so many homes is with the help of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The San Onofre nuke plant generates 2200 MW of SCE’s electricity that powers numerous pools in SoCal. Ah, I kid, hospitals, grade schools, and fire houses also get power from San Onofre. At least a portion of it.

But it seems that like most nuclear power generation facilities, SONGS needs water to cool the reactor or else it will get much too hot and cause a meltdown (in a very simplified version of how a nuke plant works). SONGS uses ocean water, as it is abundant due to SONGS location on the ocean. The intake valve is about 3000 feet offshore, but the output valve is situated at about 6000 feet offshore. Therein lies the problem of San Onofre and the solution in the form of the artificial reef.

It’s not so much that the water discharged is too warm, but rather that the cloudier near-shore water is being transferred to an area that is home to a rather sizable kelp reef that thrives in clear, non-cloudy water. Kelp needs sunlight to grow. Cloudier water means less sunlight is getting to the kelp. Kelp is an important habitat for fish and other species that depend on the “forest” for safety, stability, and food. In fifteen years of research at the site, it was determined that the kelp forest was indeed suffering a bit from the cloudy water, and if the kelp suffers, so does the neighborhood — of fish and other marine creatures.

Click on the image for better detail.
So what does SCE do? It figures that there isn’t much that can be done to prevent the cloudy water from reaching the area of the kelp forest, as the pipes are already built, and it is not like the plant itself can be located farther away from the kelp. Instead, SCE and the California Coastal Commission did some studies and concluded that if a new reef were built northwest of the San Onofre nuclear plant, the kelp could relocate and restore the area for fish and wildlife.

From the article:

SCE environmental engineers began with an experimental 23-acre reef northwest of the power plant to test the first-of-its kind design researchers had developed.

Utility and commission scientists analyzed a new single-layer rock design as well as several types of material, evaluating how best to develop a sustainable giant kelp forest. The results formed the basis for SCE’s construction plan that was endorsed last February by the coastal commission. Construction of the two-mile reef began in June and recently was completed.

So you see, urban ecoists, sometimes the appliance you plug in has far reaching consequences to many other ecosystems. Find out where your power comes from.

Southern California Edison, SCE, artificial reef, kelp, forest, fish, wildlife, Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, sunlight, California Coastal Commission, urban, ecosystems, habitat restoration

The Dutch have happened upon a neat discovery in abandoned coal mines in the Southern province of Limburg.  Water has flowed into these vacuums, and when the water is that deep underground, abutting warm rocks that are conducting the heat of the Earth’s mantle, it can become quite warm.  Warm enough to heat homes in the newly built neighborhood in Heerlen.

The map of the Netherlands colored yellow is the province of Limburg.

Limburg was once home to a thriving coal mining industry, but the mines fell out of use during the latter part of the 1960’s.  It seems the coal in the area didn’t make economic sense to mine, when natural gas was so much cheaper.  Guess the government didn’t hand out subsidies to the coal industry to make it cheaper and thus competitive against other forms of energy, as in the United States.

Wait…a coal mine?  Don’t I always write about how dirty coal is?  Why would anyone want water from a former coal mine?

The power plant does not actually use the water, per se, only the heat held by the water. The heat, i.e. energy from the heat (because heat is a form of energy — think potential rather than kinetic) is then converted to energy through turbines moved by the heated water or steam more precisely.

To put it simply, the power plant pumps water up from a certain distance underground where it is hot. The hot water coming up from the mine turns turbines, and that is how electricity is generated. In fossil fuel-based energy production, the same principle is at work, except that the heat must be generated by the combustion of oil or coal instead of it coming from deep down in the Earth.

It is called geothermal energy, and if you have been reading this author regularly, you will know how much I like geothermal.

The Heerlen Minewater Power Plant employs five wells going down as far as 700 meters or 2300 feet for the American readers. That is approximately half of a mile down, and the water in the mine (that seeped there naturally over the last thirty or so years) is a warm 89 degrees F at the bottom of the mine.

Now, of course, this type of geothermal energy source is only available to those areas that were once home to major and deep mining industries. When I compare the following two maps…

Coal Producing Regions of the United States

Potential Areas of Geothermal Energy Production

…there is a some overlap as to the regions that have geothermal potential and those coal-producing regions, but there are some areas of the United States that have coal mines but not a natural potential for the usual geothermal. So perhaps, with these coal mines, we can create our own geothermal energy. It may not work everywhere, but it could make mountaintop removal-style mining obsolete, as it could not be converted to a geothermal basin in the future after the coal runs out (or is made to reflect the true cost of the coal and its environmental impacts).

Dutch, Heerlen, Minewater Power Plant, coal mines, mining, Netherlands, geothermal, energy, electricity, United States, potential energy, turbines, generation, power, heat, subsidies, government