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Show Gooilicrmnl ujator hearing so? today The Utah Division of Water Wa-ter Rights has scheduled a public hearing today (Thursday) (Thurs-day) on Phillips Petroleum Co.'s application for state water rights on geothermal energy resource lands it holds in Beaver County. Dee Hansen, division state engineer, said he will chair the hearings April 29. Hansen Han-sen said several protestants from the Milford area are concerned that extraction of the water may affect their water rights. In July of 1974, Phillips bid a total of $801,194.81 for 10 tracts of Bureau of Land Management - administered lands near Milford, in the Roosevelt Springs Known Geothermal Resource Area. The company began drilling drill-ing in January of 1975, and in May of that same year said it had hit a "promising "promis-ing pocket" of super -heated water at a depth of about 3,000 feet. The firm had said it hoped to develop the area ior commercial generation of electrical power by 1980. Phillips also filed an en- vironmental impact assessment assess-ment on the area with the U. S. Geological Survey's Geothermal District Office for permission to"stepout" its field to find the limits of the underground water pocket. A hearing on the assessment had been scheduled sche-duled for earlier this month, but has since been continued without date. The energy company's success in the area has re -suited in considerable activity ac-tivity in southwestern Utah. Geothermal Kinetics, Inc., Utah Power & Light Co., and McCullough Oil Co. are drilling a geothermal discovery dis-covery well in the Escalante Valley in a joint venture. That well had reaced a depth of about 3,000 feet. Union Oil Co. has also filed to drill on BLM lands it leased in the 1974 sale in Roosevelt Hot Springs. And Getty Oil Co. is performing per-forming surface work in the same area. Union, Getty and Phillips were the only successful suc-cessful bidders in the first BLM sale of such leases in Utah, nearly two years ago. |