The joke about The Geysers is that it's California's "Brown Energy" because of the use of sewage for the steam generation.
I had a fascinating conversation with someone that has been working on this system for the last 20 or so years.
Water treatment is powered by the geyser and in turn the leftover brown water feeds the geyser.
Pretty neat (for sewage)!
Maybe this is a dumb question but is pumping sewage effluent into it as the water source a great idea?
Why not? The average reservoir steam temperature is well above boiling (370 F, 83 psi) so it's completely sterilized. In comparison, an autoclave used to sterilize surgical instruments (say) reaches 250 F.
Does not change your point, but an autoclave is also pressurized.
> That daily recharge is implicated in the region’s frequent small earthquakes. (But nobody seems too worried about that, and maybe it’s a good thing? Many small better than one big?)
See also: the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes whose epicenter was the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake geothermal plant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ridgecrest_earthquakes
https://news.usni.org/2019/07/09/california-earthquakes-leav...
https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=35.766&mlon=-117.605&zoo... (Epicenter)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Weapons_Station_Chin...
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/10874/?...
I've never heard any seismologist holding a responsible office blaming the Ridgecrest quake on any man-made cause. The links posted do not support that claim either.
Do you have any information which directly supports this?