The Quick and The Dead:
Industrial Cooling and Massive Ecological Destruction

Industrial facilities — power plants, oil refineries and factories — draw water from rivers, lakes and oceans to cool their generators and other equipment. The largest of these plants suck in billions of gallons of water each day, killing aquatic life on an almost unimaginable scale. Micro-organisms, floating fish eggs and larvae are drawn through heat exchanging equipment and dumped back into waterways dead. Fish, sea turtles and marine mammals are pinned against the intake screens. A trillion fish are killed each year.

This killing is unnecessary. Widely available and affordable technologies reuse and recycle cooling water, preventing fish kills and thermal pollution. But 35 years after Congress first sought to solve this problem, the power industry continues its massive ecological destruction.