Milgro Nursery Geothermal Greenhouses Newcastle, Utah

摘要

After purchasing property near the community of Newcastle, Utah in 1992, over the course of the next ten years and continuing today, Milgro Nursery began installing one of the most successful commercial greenhouse operations in the country. Initiated as a potential opportunity for business expansion beyond an established base in southern California, Milgro's Newcastle operation started as one geothermally heated 200,000-ft~(2) (1.86 ha) facility in the high, semi-arid Escalante Valley. The first facility used geothermal water at temperatures approaching 190 deg F (88 deg C) from one 500-ft deep (150-m) production well, pumped through a plate-type heat exchanger for a closed-loop heating system, and re-injected into the geothermal aquifer via one injection well. Today, Milgro's Newcastle facility consists of four production wells, two injection wells, and 1.14 million ft~(2) (approx 26 ac. [10.5 ha]) of covered growing areas. Milgro presently produces more than five million potted plants and eight million stems of cut flower per year from their Newcastle facility.