THE GEYSERS - A magnitude 3.0 earthuqake was recorded Wednesday morning in The Geysers area, a remote section of Lake County, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The minor quake generated no reports of any injuries or damage, authorities said.

The quake's epicenter was one mile west-northwest of The Geysers, a seismically active area along the Sonoma-Lake county border, according to the USGS.

The tremblor struck around 7:15 a.m. and had a depth of two miles.

The strongest quake the USGS ever recorded in The Geysers area was a magnitude 4.6 on May 29, 1987, according to seismologist David Oppenheimer. The second-strongest quake was a magnitude 4.5 that registered on Oct. 20, 2006.

"There are usually many shallow and low magnitude quakes at The Geysers, but there have been several more quakes in the 3-4 magnitude range in about the last five years,'' Oppenheimer said in a recent interview.

According to Oppenheimer, if it were not for efforts to generate electricity out of the geothermal field at The Geysers, the region would barely be seismically active at all.

"In order to get big a earthquake, you need a big fault,'' Oppenheimer said. "Here all we see are small cracks.''

Power plants run by Calpine Corp. and the Northern California Power Agency generate electricity from the heat of steam by drilling into the ground and extracting hot water, he explained. This process creates seismic activity because when the water is removed it causes the rocks underground to constantly compress and contract.