13 December, 2013 3:55PM AEDT

The heat in Portland's geothermal debate refuses to die down

In a corner of Portland's Henty Park surrounded by a cyclone fence sits the town's now defunct geothermal system. Constructed in 1983, it was unique in the world, and its 2006 closure was met with disappointment and anger that continues to simmer in the community.

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In 1978, Portland engineer Neil Buckingham began looking into the possibility of constructing a geothermal system in his hometown, that would take advantage of the hot water drawn from the ground for its water supply.

"Portland obtains its water from a deep aquifer called the Dilwyn Aquifer, and when the water reaches the surface it is 60 degrees, and it has to be cooled to be put into the reticulation for drinking water.

"It was obvious this was an enormous waste of energy and it could be used to heat buildings, swimming pools, whatever."

Turning a dream into reality

It wasn't until 1983 that Mr Buckingham's dream became a reality. He says the system was simple in its functioning.

"The water comes out of the ground at 60 degrees, it was run up past 17 buildings, each of these buildings took the hot water off it and heated water in their building which reticulated within the building.

"After the heat was removed from the geothermal it was taken back to the bore head and cooled some more to put into the reticulation system.

"There was absolutely no waste whatsoever."

Mr Buckingham says the water was used to heat the swimming pool, council buildings including the municipal offices, the civic hall, senior citizens building, library, and later a large motel and the Portland hospital.

While there were no official figures on the savings made by council on its energy bills, Mr Buckingham estimated $300,000 a year was saved, as well as thousands of tons of greenhouse gases, since fossil fuels were no longer being used.

System unique worldwide

He says the system received international attention and was unique.

"We were lucky with our water insomuch as I studied geothermal installations over in the United States, and their water had high contents of fluoride, which made it unsuitable to be used as drinking water."

Mr Buckingham says less than half the available energy was being taken from the hot water, and says there was potential to expand the geothermal system to grow fish, herbs and spices, and even to develop health spas.

He was devastated when the bore was shutdown in 2006, and believes there was no justifiable reason for Wannon Water and the Glenelg Shire Council to do so.

"If the bore had failed - and there's a big question whether it had failed - I believe it could have been rejuvenated."

Closure decision 'stupid'

Neil Buckingham believes it was a lack of cooperation and open thinking on the part of the two bodies - that were responsible for different aspects of the geothermal system - that led to the decommissioning of the bore.

"It disappoints me that two bodies such couldn't work together to the betterment of the community and the environment.

"I did take it personally, and professionally I believe it was a lack of foresight and I just don't understand how people can be so stupid."

In 1996, Wannon Water's predecessor the Portland Water Board stopped putting the geothermal reticulated water back into the town's drinking water supply, saying there was a high risk of contamination as the water passed through the geothermal system.

Neil Buckingham strongly refutes this.

"When the system was designed, it was designed in such a manner as to prevent any cross pollution, and 20 years odd testing of Deakin University showed no failure whatsover occurred over that long period of time."

Supporters in high places

Neil Buckingham wasn't the only one disappointed by the decommissing of the bore. The local member and now Premier Denis Napthine has described the closure as a disgrace and slammed the Bracks government, which was in power at the time.

Since the closure, he has expressed his strong support to reinstate a bore, but declined to comment for this story saying it was now a matter for the council.

Grant Green is the managing director of Wannon Water. He has a rather different explanation for the decommissioning of the bore.

"We commissioned (engineering consultants at) Sinclair Knight Merz to undertake an evaluation of the condition of the bore.

"We had some concerns that the bore may fail, and they concluded that there was a 50 percent probability of the bore totally failing within two years, and a 100 percent probability of failure within five years.

"The bore had more than 20 metres of head of pressure, so that meant that we'd have a guyser of hot water spewing into the local urban area of Portland.

'We had no other option'

"So we had no other option than to decommission the bore."

Mr Green says Wannon Water asked the consultants to look at the potential for refurbishing the bore, but they concluded it was too far gone.

"The column shaft on the bore is about 1.2km deep and there were holes in the column shaft."

He says while he understands the geothermal project was the first of its kind in Australia, it was a product of its time and lacked efficiency.

"If it was constructed these days it would be done quite differently because it did utilise a lot of water: about six megalitres of water a day was being extracted by that bore - the total water consumption in Portland's only about three megalitres a day - and 800,000 kilowatts of power per year were being used to cool that water to return it to the Portland canal."

Neil Buckingham insists the water gushing into the canal at the height of Victoria's drought was not being wasted, as if it wasn't being used in the geothermal system it would run past Portland and straight into the sea.

Frank Zeigler is now on the board of Wannon Water, and in 2006 was the Mayor of the Glenelg Shire. His council was provided with the engineers report on the bore, and he says the water was being wasted.

Closure a 'bitter pill to swallow'

"Geothermal energy was a key part of council's thinking, and it was a very bitter pill to swallow that it would've cost over a million - and probably closer to $2.5 million - to put a new bore down.

"I thought just to reinvent the same program of a vast amount of wastage without water security for the town, and reusing all that water without wasting so much, was pretty much an environmental risk."

He says the council could have sought a second opinion, but there was no reason to doubt the SKM report.

"In fact, I remember that the engineers came along to some of those meetings that we had and were subject to quite rigorous discussion, and there was no doubt in my mind of the Sinclair Knight Merz report at all."

Mr Zeigler says after looking at a range of options the council voted in favour of the engineering report recommendation to discontinue use of the bore.

"At the end of the day, the bore had run its race. And it had given us really good service, it had given us a good return on investment, the geothermal concept had won awards, and the engineer Neil Buckingham was highly acclaimed for his work on it.

"We freely exclaimed he was the 'father' of the Portland geothermal project."

The future of geothermal in Portland

After a number of false starts, the results of a feasability study into reinstating a bore at Henty Park were received by the council earlier this year.

Although the results haven't been released to the public, the council's intentions were declared by $150,000 in this year's budget allocated to carry out planning and design work.

In May, the council identified the reinstatemnt of a bore as a top priority. However, an Auditor-General's Report recently rated the council's financial sustainability as 'medium risk', and substantial investment from governments or private partners would be essential in the project being delivered.

Whether this project will ever be financially viable, only time will tell.