Between Mesquite and Bunkerville are warm water wells atop geothermal hot spots.

These hot spots exist throughout Nevada with both the potential to make Nevada a leading source of clean energy and generating revenue for economically starved communities.

If all the geothermal energy existing two miles underneath the United States were extracted it would supply America's power demands for the next 30,000 years.

Currently, it's not technologically or economically possible to get all that energy.

However, the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) asserts that reaching 5 percent of that energy, would produce 260,000 megawatts of electric power and reduce our dependence on coal by one-third by 2050.

Nearly all of Nevada sits on geothermal hot spots with temperatures above 100^O C (212⁰ F).

At those temperatures, they can generate both electric power and provide direct use utilizing geothermal heat pumps.

Such pumps transfer heat from the ground to homes in the winter and reverse direction to provide cooling in the summer.

Warm wells, with temperatures below 100^O C, have the potential for direct use with heat pumps.

However, the geothermal temperature below these wells is often unknown.

Therefore, if the substructure is hot enough (above 100^O C) they could generate electricity using a variety of interesting water sources to generate steam.

Enlightened leaders in California have demonstrated that cleansed municipal wastewater can be injected into underground geothermal fields to create sources of steam for generating electricity and reducing wastewater disposal problems.

Every day, Santa Rosa, Calif., injects some 12 million gallons of treated wastewater through a pipeline into the geothermal aquifer a mile and a half under ground.

There, hot rocks boil the water into steam, which is then piped to the surface to power electricity generating turbines.

A sister project in neighboring Lake County recycles eight million gallons of wastewater a day for energy production.

Together these installations generate 200 megawatts of electricity, without discharging any greenhouse gases or pollutants into the atmosphere.

In May 2009, the Obama administration made $350 million available for geothermal development, including $80 million for enhanced geothermal projects some of which are in California and Nevada on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.

Currently two geothermal power plants are operating on BLM and Forest Service lands in California.

In Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management, Battle Mountain, has approved a geothermal “fast-track” project for Ormat Technologies to construct a geothermal plant in Pershing County.

The geothermal development will cover approximately 8,470 acres of land, of which 7,460 are managed by the BLM.

When completed, the facility will include a 30-megawatt (MW) power plant, a geothermal well field, and a 120-kilowatt transmission line

The use of BLM lands has both the potential for creating clean energy and generating revenue for beleaguered communities.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D., Nev. and Rep. Dean Heller, R., Nev. have introduced legislation to designate two valleys in Lincoln County as solar pilot project areas where land leases would be auctioned to the highest-bidding solar developers.

The legislation calls for Nevada and Lincoln County to each get a quarter of the revenue from the lease and royalty incomes from developed land.

This legislation is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of leasing BLM land for alternative energy use.

Such legislation, if extended, has the potential to generate revenues from solar, wind, bio-energy and geothermal sources on some 48 million acres of public land in Nevada.

This land makes up about 67 percent of Nevada's land base.

In Mesquite, the Virgin Valley Water District wants to capture and bank about 11,000 acre-feet of water from the Virgin River for future utilization through an aquifer recharge system.

The board of directors has approved an agreement with RBF Consulting for continued investigation and project development of the program at a cost not to exceed $50,000 during fiscal year 2010-11.

The attitude, as expressed by Dr. Steve Weber of RBF Consulting is: “You have water that can’t be used as it is today.”

That is a gross misunderstanding of the potential use of water.

Both wastewater and water from the river could potentially be used to feed geothermal hotspots; if not right here, certainly in hotter structures not far away.

Or the water could feed unused land for the production of natural grasses or to feed algae ponds for conversion into bio-energy

There is also a potential to work out a deal with the Blackstone Group to switch from natural gas to geothermal energy at the Toquop site, in Lincoln County.

This is possible since the demands and prices for natural gas will escalate substantially during the next 25 years, making it difficult to reach gas-fired capacity.

The use of imported gas will be needed to meet growing demand – further compromising U.S. energy security beyond just importing the majority of our oil for meeting transportation needs.

Naysayers argue that geothermal power plants have low energy efficiencies and high up-front costs which double the cost of coal.

Those individuals ignore the costs associated with government incentives that go along with fossil fuel operations.

Nor do they figure into their equations the health care costs of fossil fuel.

They also fail to report that companies such as Glitnir are investing $1 billion in the U.S. geothermal market over the next five years and ExonMobil, Shell and Chevron are attending workshops on geothermal energy opportunities.

And, of course, they seldom mention the success of projects already under way.

Michael M. McGreer writes on public policy each month for the Writers Gallery. See his blog at: http://www.generations.typepad.com/