A package of four bills designed to modernize Idaho's state leasing rules for geothermal development on state lands was introduced today, on unanimous votes in the House Resources Committee. "Basically it'll modernize our geothermal leasing statutes, we feel, to incentivize development in a timely manner," said Kathy Opp of the state Department of Lands. The changes are backed by Gov. Butch Otter and the state Land Board, which he chairs; that board is charged with getting maximum long-term returns from state endowment lands for the endowment beneficiaries, the largest of which is the state's public schools.

In July, the Land Board learned that there's been a run on geothermal leases on state lands - 80 applications in the previous month and a half - and that Idaho needed to retool its geothermal lease rules if it hopes to eventually make millions for schools. The previous system, with dollar-an-acre rents but 10 percent royalties if the leases ever produce, had prompted speculators to take out leases and just sit on them, rather than developing them; of the  63 geothermal leases issued on state endowment lands since 2007, the only one that was producing was the one for heating the state Capitol and state office buildings. As a result, Idaho' had only made $60,000 a year in rent payments from its state-land geothermal leases.

The Land Board voted unanimously in July to declare a "known geothermal resource area" for the entire southern half of the state, including everything south of the Salmon River and everything in and south of Lemhi County to the Utah and Nevada lines; that allowed auctions to gain more for the state from the leases, but was just a stopgap measure until new rules could be passed. Opp said the "suite" of four bills introduced today apply both to endowment land and non-endowment state-owned land.