Last Thursday, a local geothermal expert, Kirsten Skeehan, and Courtney King, an architect, met with the Growers and Producers Forum and community members to discuss potential access to hot water energy and growing food year-round in heated greenhouses. Both speakers are well versed in accessing geothermal energy, such as those used by the Town of Pagosa Springs and the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership greenhouse domes.
Sponsored by Healthy Archuleta, this meeting took place at the Ruby Sisson Memorial Library.
Kirsten presented slides pertaining to the location of a number of public geothermal wells in Archuleta County, and the history, depth, and temperature of these wells. She also discussed some of the hurdles in exploring for potential geothermal wells. As interest grows and efforts continue to search for clean energy sources, there is a realization that some natural resources, geothermal energy in particular, have valuable benefits to our local agricultural industry. Living in a mountain community and experiencing a short growing season, it is difficult to provide fresh produce year-round. However, with the development of technologies in harnessing geothermal energy, it has been proven that crops can be grown inside heated greenhouses in the deepest parts of winter.
Courtney King demonstrated this concept as she shared slides of her recent trip to Iceland, a small but highly volcanic land mass roughly about the size of the State of Kentucky. She mentioned some of the ways in which the Icelandic population utilizes this natural resource in their cooking and baking, heating, and growing root crops, which they have been doing for hundreds of years. More recently, Iceland has used geothermal energy by building large greenhouses over areas where the heat can be accessed.
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