February 3, 2025
Kootenay Lake. Photo: Timothy Schafer
A project exploring geothermal heat and energy sources from Kootenay Lake is moving out of the exploration stages and into the financial planning arena as the project continues.
The Regional District of Central Kootenay Area A economic development commission supported a $10,000 allocation — at their Sept. 10 regular meeting — to the draft 2025 financial plan for the South Kootenay Lake Community Services Society to support phase five of the Kootenay Lake Geothermal Project.
The project is in response to the search for clean energy resources, and a need to better understand the potential for the province’s geothermal regions to be developed as assets that can provide heat or energy sources. The Area A project — which began as an idea in 2019 and in earnest in 2021 — is helping to understand the geothermal potential in the Kootenay Lake area.
In phase four in 2024, data was gathered to justify drilling a well in search of hotter waters — with exploration work including area on the other side of the lake, specifically around Ainsworth — that could support high enough temperatures and substantial flow rates to be developed for commercial use.
In a September report to the commission, lead volunteer researcher Gord MacMahon referenced drilling and testing and said the project “has not reached that level.”
Funding support for phase four to complete the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) work was not secured, so a magnetometer survey was conducted instead in Riondel, which a drone was used to complete late last year. Geochemical analysis is being tested at University of Calgary and University of Ottawa.
The third phase of research focused on the Crawford Creek area — identified in phase two as having the most geothermal potential — with work during in 2023 generating geotechnical data needed for a 3D geological and geothermal model.?
“The results continue to provide evidence of a geothermal system at Crawford Creek that could access geothermal fluids in excess of 75°C,” noted a report from Geoscience BC.
In phase two a study took place in an area of deeply rooted faults — preferential pathways for hot geothermal fluids to flow — that date to the Eocene (55.8 to 33.9 million years ago) and that are associated with nearby hot springs.
Prior to the study, the Dewar Creek hot spring was known to have the hottest measured surface temperature in BC (82°C) and data for the Ainsworth Hot Springs suggested a maximum temperature at depth of 165°C.
“This, combined with a detailed evaluation of the area’s geology, indicated that the east shore of Kootenay Lake was ideally situated to test the feasibility of developing a geothermal resource,” the Geoscience report for phase two read.
This second phase study conducted geological, geochemical and geospatial analyses over an area encompassing Gray Creek in the south, Tam O’Shanter Creek in the north and Mount Crawford in the east.
New wind power location
In conjunction with the project, BC Hydro is moving ahead in developing 10 new sites for wind power, one area identified for a wind site location is the ridge above Duck Creek, north of Creston.
Early in September 2024, Fortis opened a request for expression of interest period that organizations could submit applications for new power, one which the Kootenay Lake Geothermal Project team put together an expression of interest application.
Timothy Schafer