Fighting Power Plants that
Kill Fish by the Billions
By Reed Super

Just below the surface at most power plants — whether they split atoms or burn fossil fuels — are giant intake structures that withdraw massive volumes of water for cooling. They use the free, cold water to condense steam exhausted from their electricity-producing turbines, and then discharge heated water. In fact, that’s why steam-electric power plants are typically sited near large bodies of water in the first place.

But the colossal water withdrawals — several billion gallons per day at the largest plants — also draw in and kill enormous numbers of aquatic organisms at all life stages, while also trapping larger adult fish and wildlife on intake screens. Like giant vacuums, power plants suck in massive amounts of water from our waterways, indiscriminately devour aquatic life and spew heated, lifeless water downstream.

More than 30 years ago, a slew of massive, well-publicized fish kills occurred at power plants around the country. The Brayton Point power station on Mt. Hope Bay in Massachusetts entrained an astonishing 164 million menhaden and river herring on a single day, July 2, 1971. The P.H. Robinson plant in Galveston Bay, Texas impinged more than seven million fish in 12 months in 1969 and 1970, and the Indian Point nuclear facility on New York’s Hudson River impinged 1.3 million fish over a 10-week period. In the late summer of 1971, more than two million dead menhaden clogged the screens at the Millstone plant in Niantic Bay, Connecticut. The public took notice and Congress took action, but the carnage never really stopped. In early February 2004, the San Onofre plant north of San Diego killed about 13,500 pounds of sardines in a 24-hour period. And while these extraordinary fish kills make news, the daily losses of billions of aquatic organisms go largely unnoticed by the average citizen.

The electric power industry is by far the greatest user of cooling water, withdrawing more than 78 trillion gallons per year from U.S. waters. Ironically, while generating electricity for the power grid, these plants sap biological energy from the aquatic ecosystem. Factories, particularly those in the pulp and paper, metals, chemicals and petroleum refining industries also use significant volumes for cooling. All together, industrial facilities withdraw more than 100 trillion gallons per year, which accounts for more than half of all fresh and saline water withdrawals from U.S. waters.

Needless Killing
But none of these facilities actually need to kill fish, use surface water or even be located on the waterfront. State-of-the-art plants — and even less sophisticated ones built in arid regions — use little or no water for cooling. Instead they minimize water needs by recycling their used cooling water in a closed-cycle system. These plants utilize cooling towers — using the high-efficiency of evaporation to cool their equipment. Their water demands are vastly reduced, by 95 percent or more, and can be met with municipal water, groundwater or effluent from wastewater treatment plants, virtually eliminating fish kills. Or plants can be air cooled with giant radiators known as dry cooling towers, removing altogether their need for cooling water.

If such beneficial technologies exist, why aren’t they universally used or required? One answer is that the electrification of America occurred well before aquatic life was understood and valued. Today, companies remain extremely reluctant to invest in technological upgrades that reduce their bottom line. And government lacks the political will to force them to protect our waterways.

Thus, while new plants are often (but not always) built with recirculating cooling systems, more than 1,000 existing power plants and factories nationwide still use antiquated and destructive once-through cooling systems. While once-through cooling systems earn handsome profits for their owners, they wipe out aquatic life in nearby waterways. Waterkeepers have been fighting to reverse the tragedy since their founding on the Hudson River 40 years ago. The battle for our fisheries is far from over, but hopeful signs are emerging around the country.

Intake
Cooling water intake structures may be large openings in a sea wall or pipes extending well offshore. They may be fitted with trash racks to exclude debris, or with more elaborate screens and fish handling systems designed to return larger fish to the water. Whether protected or not, the sheer volume and velocity of water withdrawals passing through them harm and kill aquatic life in the same two ways.

First, fish and shellfish, their eggs and larvae, and other organisms too small to be screened out are drawn through a cooling water intake structure into plants’ heat exchangers. These entrained organisms are subjected to mechanical stress, thermal shock and chemical exposure that few, if any, survive.

Second, the force of water passing through the intake structure impinges larger organisms, such as adult and juvenile fish, invertebrates, reptiles and marine mammals, on the intake screens, causing harm or death through starvation, exhaustion, asphyxiation or descaling.

Entrainment and impingement affect the full spectrum of organisms at all life stages: eggs, larvae, juvenile and adult, from tiny photosynthetic organisms (phytoplankton) to fish, shrimp, crabs, birds and sea turtles — including threatened and endangered species.

The effects on the aquatic ecosystem are both obvious and more subtle. The extermination of adult fish deprives commercial, recreational and subsistence fisherman of their catch. Opportunities for nature study, scientific research and aesthetic appreciation of aquatic life are also diminished, and commercial use of the fishery is devastated.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Even though available statistics provide only a partial picture of the severity of impacts, available data on mortality at power plant intake structures is staggering. The Salem nuclear plant in New Jersey withdraws more than three billion gallons per day — which is more than two million gallons every minute — from the biologically rich Delaware River. The plant’s intake structures kill almost 845 million fish of at least eight important species each year, and the mortality of fish eggs and larvae is many times higher. Salem’s death toll for some species quadruples the total take by commercial and recreational fishing on the river.

In Southern California, the San Onofre nuclear plant kills 57 tons of fish annually, causing a 50-70 percent decline in fish populations within three kilometers. Up north, two San Francisco Bay plants impinge and entrain more than 36,000 endangered Chinook salmon each year, along with other threatened and endangered species. In Florida, approximately 3,200 threatened or endangered sea turtles entered the intake structure at the St. Lucie nuclear plant from 1976 to 1994, resulting in mortality of 160 turtles.

These fish kills also disrupt the natural function of the entire ecosystem. The lost fish become unavailable as prey for wildlife higher on the food chain, such as birds, mammals and larger fish, or to serve as predators. In nature, the overwhelming majority of young fish that perish before maturity contribute to the aquatic ecosystem by consuming prey and ultimately providing fodder for predators. Because of their death at the intakes, however, entrained biota immediately become detritus for decomposers, transferring energy down the food chain from higher predators to lower organisms. When that happens, the water’s ecological integrity is lost. But readily available cooling system upgrades can prevent this damage.

Cooling Systems 101
There are three basic kinds of cooling systems available to power plants, the impacts of which vary by several orders of magnitude. The most destructive type of system, known as once-through or open cycle cooling, draws water from a source waterbody to absorb heat and then discharges it at an elevated temperature. None of this cooling water is recycled. In the U.S., more than 1,000 industrial facilities (including 500 large power plants) still use once-through cooling. Each day, each of the large plants withdraws more than 50 million gallons of cooling water — the largest of those withdraws hundreds of millions or even several billion gallons.

The environmental damage caused by once-through systems can be dramatically reduced — by 95 percent or more — by recycling cooling water. Closed-cycle systems “reduce the amount of cooling water needed and in turn directly reduce the number of aquatic organisms entrained in the cooling water intake structure, as well as impingement and other stresses on the ecosystem. Virtually all of the gas-fired power plants and 73 percent of the coal-fired plants built in the last 25 years have closed-cycle cooling.

Power plants with dry cooling systems release waste heat by sending steam through narrow tubes with cooling fins like a giant automotive radiator. As air is blown across the fins, either by natural drafts or fans, the steam cools and condenses back into water that is reused to generate more electricity. Air-cooling obviates cooling water needs, and thus eliminates fish kills. Power plants have used dry cooling systems for nearly 70 years. In the U.S., dry cooling was introduced in the late 1960s and, today, more than 600 power plants worldwide are dry-cooled.

Battleground Hudson: Indian Point, Storm King and the Stripers
The Hudson Valley has long been considered the birthplace of modern environmentalism. It was there in the 1960s that citizens defeated Consolidated Edison’s proposal to build a massive pumped-storage hydroelectric facility on top of Storm King Mountain. The Storm King decision famously established the public’s right to sue to protect its ecological and aesthetic interests. Further, as John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. describe in The Riverkeepers, the fight against power plant fish kills on the Hudson also played a central role in the founding of Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, which launched Riverkeeper and, ultimately, the international Waterkeeper movement.

From the 1950s though the early 1970s, five power plants were built within a 25-mile stretch of the rugged Hudson Highlands, which serve as a principal spawning ground for striped bass and many other species. These plants all use once-through cooling and collectively withdraw up to five billion gallons per day from the river. The Danskammer coal plant withdraws up to 455 million gallons per day, and on peak days the two nuclear reactors at Indian Point withdraw about 2.5 billion gallons from the river each day — twice the drinking water supply for all nine million people in New York City and nearby Westchester County. The Lovett, Roseton and Bowline power plants can withdraw an additional two billion gallons per day. These massive withdrawals kill more than a billion adult and juvenile fish, larvae and eggs each year. Indian Point alone destroys up to 20 percent of the year-class of a number of important species; on average, the power plants together kill 40 percent of the Hudson River’s young striped bass population. The plants also discharge water at temperatures up to 34°F hotter than the river. Retrofitting these plants with closed-cycle cooling would reduce the water withdrawals and fish kills by 95 percent or more and drastically reduce the heated discharge.

When, in 1963, Con Ed applied for a license to construct the Storm King project, fishermen on the Hudson were already well aware of the massive fish kills at the Indian Point plant. Indian Point thus foretold the damage Storm King would cause. A visit to the plant by Art Glowka, one of the Hudson River Fisherman’s Association’s founders, revealed thousands of dead fish on the intake screens. Others had seen pictures of dead stripers piled twelve feet high at a Con Ed dump. Although state officials tried to conceal the photographs, Bob Boyle, Riverkeeper’s first chairman, tracked down the photographs and published them in an April 26, 1965 Sports Illustrated article entitled “A Stink of Dead Stripers.”

As Cronin and Kennedy explain, the carnage at Indian Point helped the Hudson River Fishermen and their allies make a compelling case against Storm King, which would have been a fish slaughterhouse twice as large. The 1980 Hudson River Settlement Agreement, hailed by The New York Times as a “peace treaty for the Hudson,” resolved the Storm King matter and was supposed to have set in motion a process to address the other power plants’ impact on the river’s fisheries. But to get Con Ed to permanently pull the plug on its Storm King proposal, the environmentalists and agencies agreed, at least temporarily, to relieve Con Ed and the other utilities from the obligation to build closed-cycle cooling towers at the five existing plants.

Congress Mandates the “Best Technology Available,” EPA and States Balk
Prompted by the massive fish kills at Indian Point and other plants, Congress included a special provision in the 1972 Clean Water Act to address cooling water intakes. While most of the act focuses on discharges of pollutants into U.S. waters, section 316(b) covers withdrawals from those same waters. Under the law, EPA must require power plants to minimize adverse environmental impact from cooling water withdrawals. Congress placed mandatory time limits on EPA to develop and implement standards for cooling water intakes: 1974 for new facilities and 1977 for existing facilities.

In 1977, in a lawsuit filed by the utilities, a federal appeals court struck down EPA’s first attempt at section 316(b) regulations due to procedural defects. EPA withdrew the regulation, and for more than two decades failed to propose any new cooling water intake regulations.

In the absence of national regulations, cooling water standards have been relegated to ad hoc determination by individual permit writers, typically state agencies, exercising their “best professional judgment.” This site-specific approach, which requires a complex assessment of the local marine ecosystem and fishery population dynamics to determine technology requirements, often takes many years — in some cases, more than a decade. Industry, which profits directly from stretching out these proceedings as long possible, has taken advantage of biological uncertainty and used delay tactics to avoid technology upgrades. Further, in the absence of federal standards, states are under economic and political pressure not to raise environmental standards further or faster than surrounding states. Thus, for cooling water intake structures, unlike discharges of many pollutants, an ineffectual site-specific approach has persisted for decades — on the Hudson and on waterways around the country.

Solving the problem would require strong citizen leadership and tireless capacity for litigation to force the federal government, states and, ultimately, power plants to abide by the law. Enter the Waterkeepers.

LITIGATION — Riverkeeper, Inc., et al. v. EPA: An Epic Tale in Three Acts
In 1990, frustrated with EPA’s and states’ inaction and the long-standing regulatory vacuum, a coalition of Waterkeeper programs led by Hudson Riverkeeper notified EPA of its intent to sue the agency to compel it to issue cooling water intake regulations. In 1993, they filed suit in federal district court and, in 1995, EPA agreed to a court order requiring final action on regulations by August 2001. Later, after EPA reported that it could not complete the entire regulation by the deadline, the court order was modified to allow EPA to issue the federal regulations in three phases: Phase I would cover all new facilities proposing to use an intake structure; Phase II would cover existing power plants; and Phase III would cover existing factories. These regulations, if sufficiently stringent, would provide mandatory national minimums that all states would have to follow.

Phase I: NEW PLANTS — Finally (after 27 years), a Federal Regulation… and More Litigation
On December 18, 2001, more than 27 years after Congress’s deadline, EPA finally published its Phase I Rule. At their core, the regulations established national intake capacity and velocity requirements for all new facilities based on closed-cycle cooling technology. However, the rule also included an enormous loophole: it allowed new facilities to install fish-killing once-through cooling systems, so long as they agreed to take other measures intended to “restore” the fish they killed. These so-called “restoration measures” were obviously a ruse, and a singular boon to industry, because habitat restoration is prone to failure and is rarely if ever intended to replace the number or variety of aquatic and marine animals killed by the plants.

Riverkeeper, other Waterkeepers and their allies filed a second lawsuit, this time in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, to challenge the final Phase I rule. In February 2004, in a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration, a three-judge panel agreed that EPA had exceeded its authority from Congress by allowing power plants to choose the “restoration measures” option in lieu of installing technology to prevent fish kills.

As a result, all newly-constructed facilities must now install the best technology available to minimize fish kills, and may not continue to slaughter fish on the quixotic hope that they can later “restore” those fish. But existing facilities continue to churn their fish-killing machines.

Phase II: EXISTING PLANTS — OMB Sabotages Rule… and More Litigation Ensues
On December 28, 2001, EPA submitted its draft Phase II proposal to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. After many years of research, EPA’s biologists and engineers — most of whom are career environmental professionals, not political appointees — proposed to require modern closed-cycle cooling technology for 60 of the country’s largest power plants located on the most biologically productive estuarine and marine waters. But when the proposed rule emerged 60 days later, it included 58 major changes. Most significantly, the White House had removed the closed-cycle cooling requirement altogether and added a provision allowing a site-specific determination of permit requirements based on a cost-benefit analysis.

Few people know that in the Executive Office Buildings next to the White House, a small department of OMB known as the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs or “OIRA” wields enormous power over every regulation issued by the federal government. With the authority to review major regulatory proposals of over 100 federal agencies, OIRA does the hatchet work for the administration. Bush’s first head of OIRA was Dr. John Graham, an anti-regulatory zealot whose nomination barely squeaked through Senate confirmation. Once Dr. Graham and OIRA got hold of EPA’s Phase II Rule, they gutted even the minimum protections EPA’s staff had included. Instead, OIRA replaced it with a requirement to use technologies that are far less effective, such as fish return systems and fine mesh screens.

OIRA’s stated purpose is to assess the costs and benefits of proposed regulations. But Congress charged EPA with minimizing environmental impact; cost-benefit analysis is not supposed to affect EPA’s decision-making. Astonishingly, OIRA eviscerated EPA’s proposal even after admitting that the benefits of protecting the aquatic bounty of our nation’s fisheries outweighed the technology costs by at least several hundred million dollars.

The Phase II Rule requires existing power plants to reduce impingement by 80 to 95 percent and entrainment by 60 to 90 percent, clearly a major improvement over the status quo. But these wide and indeterminate ranges and the assorted loopholes and escape hatches EPA (under OMB’s strict control) included in the rule undermine these requirements. For example, the rule again allows “restoration measures” to be used in place of protective technologies — even though the court had invalidated that facet of the Phase I Rule.

Not surprisingly, the Riverkeeper-led coalition again filed suit — this time with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch and four other state Attorneys General joining them — and challenged the Phase II rule. The attorneys filed over 1,000 pages of briefing and argued the case for three hours to a three-judge panel on June 8, 2006. A decision is expected in the coming months.

Phase III: EXISTING FACTORIES — Stillborn… and Still More Litigation
On November 24, 2004, EPA proposed a Phase III Rule covering existing manufacturing facilities, including those in the pulp and paper, chemicals, petroleum and coal products, and primary metals industries. The proposal was nearly identical to the Phase II Rule. It required impingement and entrainment reductions of 80-95 and 60-90 percent, respectively, and it was likewise riddled with loopholes.

Worse yet, when EPA published its final decision on Phase III regulations on June 16, 2006, the agency revealed that it had decided not to promulgate regulations for Phase III facilities after all. EPA’s notice said that it had based the decision on its judgment that the “monetized” costs would be wholly disproportionate to the “monetized” environmental benefits. Once again, OIRA’s economic voodoo and anti-regulatory agenda threaten to trump sound environmental policy. But this appeared to be the first time EPA had ever used a formal, monetized cost-benefit rationale to justify its failure to regulate.

EPA estimated that the Phase III regulations it proposed but failed to adopt would have prevented the loss of 98 million “age-1 equivalent” fish and more than four million pounds of fishery yields, annually. Because EPA lacks the statutory authority to base these regulations on monetized cost-benefit analysis and was unable to put dollar figures on the environmental benefits, its decision appears plainly unlawful. As a result, Riverkeeper’s coalition again filed suit, this time seeking an order setting aside EPA’s decision and compelling the agency to issue regulations for Phase III facilities, as required by section 316(b).

Hopeful Signs East and West
The battle to protect fish from mass eradication in power plants and factories goes on, and while the federal government continues to obstruct progress, in a few quarters there may be light at the other end of the intake pipe.

In October 2003, EPA’s Region 1, in close coordination with the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, issued a Clean Water Act permit for the Brayton Point power plant in Narragansett Bay. The permit — as Narragansett Baykeeper John Torgan had long sought — requires the plant to reduce its water withdrawal by approximately 94 percent, from nearly 1 billion gallons a day to 56 million gallons a day. The company unsuccessfully appealed the permit, and the next stop will likely be federal court. If the permit is upheld, and Brayton Point upgrades four generating units with modern, closed-cycle technology as the permit requires, the Mt. Hope Bay fishery is expect to substantially recover.

Several years ago, Riverkeeper petitioned New York State to evaluate the long-dormant permit for the Danskammer and Indian Point plants and then filed suit, ultimately obtaining a court order requiring the state to issue new permits. In November 2003, the state issued a draft permit for Indian Point, which declared that the power plants switch to closed-cycle cooling as the best technology available. However, the permit failed to require actual cooling tower construction during its five-year term and indicated that construction of the towers would not be required until (and unless) the plant receives an extension of its Nuclear Regulatory Commission license in 2013. Riverkeeper is challenging this determination as well as the proposed new permits for the Danskammer, Roseton and Bowline plants, in each case seeking closed-cycle cooling retrofits.

Leading the charge towards eliminating the scourge of once-through cooling is, not surprisingly, California. In April 2006, with support of a coalition led by California Coastkeeper Alliance, two state agencies unanimously passed resolutions strongly discouraging the continued use of once-through cooling. In June 2006, the State Water Resources Control Board proposed a policy that would require California power plants using once-through cooling systems to either reduce intake flow to that commensurate with a closed-cycle recirculating system or reduce entrainment of all life stages of fish and shellfish by 90 percent by any combination of operational or structural controls. California Coastkeeper Alliance is working with the Water Board to improve and finalize its draft policy.

The fight to realize Congress’s and the nation’s goal of controlling industrial cooling water intakes is far from won. But in battle after battle Waterkeepers and our partners are taking on the government and the all-powerful industries who for 30 years have worked diligently to avoid obeying the law. And we simply will not stop until these lawbreakers take the necessary steps to ensure that fish are no longer killed by the billions.