As reported by BushGreenwatch last February, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opted to allow existing power plants and other industrial facilities to continue using cooling water systems which kill countless fish in American rivers every year--and to mitigate the damage by trying to restock the fish.
EPA issued this regulation despite a unanimous decision by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which found that allowing massive destruction of wildlife in cooling systems, and then attempting to replace them in the ecosystem, did not fulfill the Clean Water Act requirement to use the "best technology available" to mitigate environmental damage.
Now, the Hudson River-based organization Riverkeeper is again leading a national coalition of environmental groups in suing EPA, charging the agency with violating the mandate of Congress under the Clean Water Act.
"Unfortunately, the agency has illegally rewritten the Clean Water Act to allow industry to avoid upgrading power plants that function as aquatic slaughterhouses," said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, in the organization's July announcement of the suit. [1]
While the Second Circuit's February decision applied specifically to a portion of EPA's rules called Phase I regulation, which applies to new facilities, Riverkeeper charges EPA with exceeding its authority in applying a different standard to existing facilities with the subsequent set of rules, called Phase II regulation. [2]
"EPA has caved in to the demands of the power industry, and completely abdicated responsibility under the Clean Water Act," Reed Super, Riverkeeper senior attorney and lead counsel in the suit, told BushGreenwatch. "We hope the court will vacate or remand some or all of the rule." [3]
Super tells BushGreenwatch that six state attorneys general—Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island—have also filed suit against EPA.
"The states, as well as environmental groups, recognize that EPA is dropping the ball. This will raise the level of importance of the case in the eyes of the judge," says Super.
Currently, the best cooling technology available is "closed cycle, " which re-circulates water repeatedly to cool a plant. This dramatically lessens water use, and reduces the kills of fish and other organisms by approximately 95% over the much older, more destructive—and less expensive--"once-through" systems.
These older systems pull in several billion gallons of water a day, leading to a massive mortality--trillions of fish, shellfish, and other organisms--every year.
In once-through systems, larger animals are killed by "impingement," or being trapped against water intake screens. Their eggs and larvae are killed by "entrainment," being drawn in to exchangers that transfer the plant's heat to the water, where they die from heat, toxicity, and physical stress.
Once-through cooling systems rival the fishing industry in the number of fish and shellfish killed every year. About 52% of power plants in the U.S. use once-through systems. [3]
Super vividly describes the impact this outmoded technology has on the Hudson River. "Just one plant--the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant--uses 2.4 billion gallons a day of cooling water," he says. "By comparison, nine million people use New York City's water supply, and they consume only 1.2 billion gallons a day.
"Indian Point is just one of five plants on the Hudson using once-through cooling systems. Altogether they are sucking nearly five billion gallons daily from the river."
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SOURCES:
[1] Riverkeeper press release, Jul. 26, 2004.
[2] Riverkeeper fact sheet.
[3] Ibid.
