Marrow County, Oregon

CHAIRWOMAN MILLER: Item 4 on the agenda is the noise complaint petition from residents along Deep Creek Road. Mr. Gable, you have two minutes.

RESIDENT (ARTHUR GABLE, PARCEL 212-C): It isn't a noise anymore, Evelyn. You can feel it in your fillings. My well pump brought up warm salt water on Tuesday, and there was hair wrapped around the impeller. Long, coarse black hair. We are forty miles from the ocean and 1,400 feet up in the Cascades. Tell the board what the drill crew hit under Parcel 409-B before they walked off the job.

COUNTY ENGINEER COLE: For the record, the exploratory geothermal bore at WELL-09 was suspended at 1,840 feet due to equipment binding. The acoustic humming is just harmonic resonance in the basalt layer.

RESIDENT GABLE: Basalt doesn't knock back when you tap a wrench on the casing pipe, Richard! And it doesn't call your landline at 3:14 in the morning breathing wet air!

SHERIFF VANCE: State DOT asked why we dropped the concrete jersey barriers across Route 88. I told them rockslide hazard. That buys us maybe seventy-two hours before someone notices no milk trucks or mail carriers have left the valley.

ENGINEER COLE: The concrete plug we poured down WELL-09 didn't set. Something pushed all forty tons of wet slurry back up the shaft overnight. And the intake screens at Marrow Reservoir are covered in human fingernails and pre-1974 clothing.

CHAIRWOMAN MILLER: Why is Substation B still feeding 4.6 megawatts into the old timber mill on Parcel 409-B? Cut the breakers!

ENGINEER COLE: We cannot cut the power, Madam Chair. Per the 1974 Bureau of Reclamation charter (OVERRIDE CODE: PROTOCOL-7), the arc lamps in the lower cavern must remain illuminated at all times. When the lights went out for eleven seconds in 1974, we had to flood the entire original townsite under Parcel 000-0 just to keep them down.