Loading ...Past attempts to divert lava flows have been spectacularly unsuccessful. Army tried bombing a flow of Mauna Loa approaching Hilo, with no effect. There’s just too much, too viscous, too hot. Damming it up with rock pile walls is only a small diversion. Lava flows around the wall and engulfs it anyway. At this point the government will not allow any attempts to divert lava flows because they have been proven pointless.
Understand that the entire southern half of the Big Island is composed of lava rock from Mauna Loa. So yes, there are quarries that bust up the rock for gravel road building. Large boulders used for seawalls, etc. The entire terrain here is like broken or poured concrete!
The northern half of the island around Mauna Kea is much older decomposed lava that forms good red soil for farmlands. Where you do find rocky materials from Mauna Kea, they are soft and crumbly, eons old and decomposed.
As for energy, yes! There are geothermal wells in the east rift zone just five miles from my home where the wells have tapped into old lava pockets that are still molten hot. They tap the high pressure hydrogen sulfide gas bubble and circulate the heat to turbines before re-injecting it back into the well. 20-25% of the electricity for this island is generated at the geothermal plant.
Hawaiian Electric once had dreams of exporting our geothermal to the neighbor islands, but inventing high voltage cables that would withstand the deep ocean pressure between here and Maui is a problem that has not been solved yet.