HILO — A production well at Puna Geothermal Venture in Puna was covered by lava late Sunday afternoon, Hawaii County Civil Defense reported.
The agency said the lava came from fissures No. 21 and No. 7, which at 7:45 p.m. Sunday evening was described by Civil Defense as “fast moving” and a threat to more structures in Leilani Estates.
The well, KS-6, along with a second well about 100 yards away, have been “successfully plugged” and “are stable and secured, and are being monitored,” according to Civil Defense. Neither should release any hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas used in the wells, the agency said.
At an afternoon media briefing in Hilo, Gov. David Ige said, “The Puna Geothermal Venture site is safe. We believe we have mitigated any risk to the community.”
Ige said PGV employees and a task force assembled by the governor remain on site and are working to eliminate or minimize any hazards.
Tom Travis, director of Hawaii Emergency Management Agency and the head of the task force, said the four wells on one of the power plant’s pads — production wells KS-5, KS-6 and KS-14, plus injection well KS-3 — “are presenting minimum interference to the lava. They’re all close to the ground and covered, so the lava should go right over them.” All are in the lava’s path, he confirmed.
Travis said KS-5 and KS-6 have been quenched and plugged with large master valves, and cinder has been put into the well cylinders as a buffer between the lava and the valves.
Mike Kaleikini, PGV’s senior director of Hawaii affairs, said KS-14, which didn’t respond to efforts to quench it, was plugged with a clay-like substance called barite, and cinder also was installed over the barite.
“From my perspective … we’ve got a sufficient plug that’s in there. We would like to have put in the metal plug, but we’re confident that the plug will maintain its mechanical integrity,” Kaleikini said.
Concern has previously been expressed about the potential release of hydrogen sulfide from lava reaching PGV’s production wells. The power plant has been taken offline, but KS-14 is still considered active. Travis said it would be “difficult … to imagine” a hydrogen sulfide leak “as a result of the intrusion of the lava.”
“That doesn’t mean that there may not be a case that I haven’t anticipated. (But) I can give you no example of how that might happen right now,” he said.
Ige noted the county’s standard for evacuation of workers and nearby residents due to hydrogen sulfide occurs at 25 parts per billion. He said that is “a thousand times” stricter than the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s standard for workplace exposure. He said constant readings have shown a hydrogen sulfide emission level of zero at the site, but acknowledged the release of the gas into the air “is a possibility.”
“But we believe the PGV site is safe …” Ige said. “So, we feel, at this point in time, that the facility is stable and secure, and we don’t anticipate that there would be any issue with the PGV site.”
Kaleikini said there are two other well pads that are at a higher elevation than the pad covered by lava on Sunday, and another well, KS-9, still displays activity “at a lower pressure” than KS-14.
“We’ve got a pretty good handle on that. We’re getting ready to put a plug in that, also,” he said. “… I just want to emphasize … that we don’t anticipate any compromise of the wells’ mechanical integrity. We don’t anticipate any emissions of hydrogen sulfide from our geothermal wells.
“… I think the peace of mind will come once the lava crosses over the well and we can tell you guys that the well is fine, which is what we fully anticipate.”
The governor also said two Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, due to return to Marine Corps Base Hawaii on Oahu after a seven-day Big Island deployment, will remain “as long as we believe there is the possibility of a mass evacuation.”
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported Sunday a new fissure, No. 24, is active in Leilani Estates subdivision between Nohea and Kupono streets.
HVO geophysicist Jim Kauahikaua said fissures 8 and 16 reactivated, 22 and 13 are still the main southbound channels going into the two ocean entries, but No. 7 is the biggest producer, with lava fountains almost 200 feet high.
“It’s been very dramatic,” Kauahikaua said. “We can actually see that fountaining very clearly on one of our East Rift Zone cams, that’s called the PGV cam.
“From vent 7, there are two main channels. The north channel goes toward PGV property, and the south channel will … go south, possibly creating a new ocean entry sometime in the next day or two, if it continues.”
Kauahikaua said there was an ash plume at the summit of Kilauea about noon on Sunday that rose 10,000 feet above sea level, and the summit area of Kilauea “is still deflating.”
“The Lower East Rift Zone is quite stable, in terms of expansion and earthquakes. Gas emission rates are quite high in both areas,” he said.
Steve Brantley, HVO deputy scientist-in-charge, said the lava lake in the overlook crater inside Kilauea’s caldera has grown from about 12 acres on May 5 to between 90 and 94 acres on Saturday “as a result of rockfalls peeling away from the overlook crater walls and falling into the deepening conduit.”
Ian Morrison, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Honolulu, said the moderate tradewinds of the past several days, which has blown the ash and volcanic emissions to the southwest, are forecast to weaken today and shift to a more easterly, and perhaps southeasterly, direction.
“That’s gonna push some of the volcanic emissions more toward over the Puna area and possibly into the Hilo area by (this) evening,” Morrison said.
He said Puna and Hilo should experience vog, at least into Tuesday, when the trades are expected to “reinvigorate and strengthen, bringing a more east-northeast flow, and pushing the emissions down toward the coastline towards the southwest.”
Morrison said there also will be increased rain-shower activity in East Hawaii.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
