by Rod Hughes

Conscious of environmental concerns, Costa Rica’s government-owned electric company, ICE, has a new drilling technique to concentrate the surface space occupied by its new Las Pailas geothermal power plant on the edge of Rincon de la Vieja National Park. The plant is due to go on line in 2011 with 35 megawatts of output.

The plan is to use a diagonal or oblique method of drilling from a small area instead of vertically drilling the shaft down to the superheated volcanic steam which takes up more surface area. Thus, the turbines will be clumped together. The shafts go down to a depth of 3,000 meters and the steam rises at some 100 kilometers per hour to turn the turbines that move the generators

Currently a bill to allow geothermal drilling in national parks before the Legislative Assembly is meeting opposition from environmentalists who insist that such generators will be detrimental to the ecosystem. Las Pailas is exempt from this concern since it is just outside the national park boundry. The big Miravalles geothermal plant on the flanks of Rincon de la Vieja Volcano, which went on line in 1994, occupies four hectares of land, one hectare for each of the four vertical shafts.

Las Pailas, admittedly a smaller plant, will occupy one hectare by using the diagonal shafts. A hydroelectric dam such as Cachi, by contrast, would put more than 320 hectares under water. In answering environmentalists’ concerns regarding the Miravalles plant, ICE points out that they reforested the plant area with 360,000 trees.

Each “well” going down to the level of the superheated steam costs an average of $1 million and drilling advances three or four meters per hour. The plant on the surface consists of the generator building, a cooling tower and electrical substation.

Note: La Nacion’s latest report again failed to address another environmental concern, namely the high tension lines that run from the plant to the consumer, usually through a cleared area that breaks up normal passage of wildlife through their natural environment.

by Rod Hughes

Rodrigo Kenton, 53, new head coach of the national soccer team (known popularly here as la Sele), has asked Costa Rica’s soccer organization, FEDEFUTBOL, for two extra exhibition matches to shake out the kinks in his strategy. His predecessor, Hernan Medford, had something like 20 preparatory matches (most of which the Sele lost or tied in a dismal run up to the actual eliminations.)

But the team has made it past the first round of eliminations and now faces a second round against El Salvador, Haiti and Surinam in the CONCACAF regional contest leading to the World Cup in 2010. Although favored to win in this group, the Ticos under Medford played eratically during the 18 months he had the All-Stars under his command.

Now Kenton is starting from zero in the second round and wants extra non-CONCACAF matches betweeen Sept. 22 and Oct. 5 and between Oct. 27 and Nov. 9, during a four-week lull in the eliminations. Even then, these matches probably are later than he would like, coming as they would late in the second round when disasters could have already occurred. The only problem in this schedule is that the matches would come in the heat of the 2008-9 First Division season and the club owners are jealous of lending their players to the national team.

But the club owners are better than they were in the past. Before 1990 the national championship was paramount to most of them and to heck with the team that bore the flag. Even in the late 1980s, soccer lovers would gather up Sele players in their cars during off times to take them to impromptu practices. Because of this dedication, the All-Stars not only made it past Mexico to the World Cup in Italy but into the second round, much to the astonishment of many international sportwriters.