Justices join debate over power plants, fish kills

updated 3:07 p.m. ET Oct. 18, 2008

BUCHANAN, N.Y. - For a newly hatched striped bass in the Hudson River, a clutch of trout eggs in Lake Michigan or a baby salmon in San Francisco Bay, drifting a little too close to a power plant can mean a quick and turbulent death.

Sucked in with enormous volumes of water, battered against the sides of pipes and heated by steam, the small fry of the aquatic world are being sacrificed in large numbers each year to the cooling systems of power plants around the country.

Environmentalists say the nation's power plants are needlessly killing fish and fish eggs with their cooling systems, but energy-industry officials say opponents of nuclear power are exaggerating the losses.

The issue is affecting the debate over the future of a nuclear plant in the suburbs north of New York City, and the facilities and environmentalists are closely watching the outcome here to see how to proceed in other cities around the country. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this term in a lawsuit related to the matter.

The issue's scope is tremendous. More than 1,000 power plants and factories around the country use water from rivers, lakes, oceans and creeks as a coolant. At Indian Point plant in New York, the two reactors can pull in 1.7 million gallons of water per minute. Nineteen plants on or near the California coast use 16.3 billion gallons of sea water every day.

Most of the casualties are just fish eggs, and for many species, it takes thousands of eggs to result in one adult fish. The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration uses various formulas and says the number of eggs and larvae killed each year at the nation's large power plants would have grown into 1.5 billion year-old fish, counting only species valuable for commercial or recreational fishing.

The EPA says it also tracks other species of fish, and its overall figure for year-old-equivalent fish lost in power-plant cooling systems is 3.5 billion per year.

Activists: Food web weakened
Environmentalists note that even fish that die before maturity contribute to the ecosystem as food for larger fish and birds, and as predators themselves on smaller organisms. But once they've gone through the power plant, they become decomposing detritus on the river bottom and have moved from the top to the bottom of the food chain, said Reed Super, an environmental lawyer specializing in the federal Clean Water Act.

"This is a really significant ongoing harm to our marine ecosystem," adds Angela Haren, program director for the California Coastkeeper Alliance in San Francisco.

Technology has long existed that might reduce the fish kill by 90 percent or more. Cooling towers allow a power plant to recycle the water rather than continuously pump it in. New power plants are required to use cooling towers, but most existing plants resist any push to convert, citing the huge cost and claiming that most fish eggs and larvae are doomed anyway.

"We're not killing grown fish," says Jerry Nappi, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, owner of Indian Point. "If we were killing billions of grown fish you'd be able to walk across the Hudson on their backs."

And Nappi says the fish population in the Hudson is stable, despite a recent study commissioned by Indian Point opponents that said 10 of 13 species were declining.

Company: Tech fix costs $1.5 billion
He also says an insistence on cooling towers could lead to Indian Point's closing and a sudden power deficit in the New York metropolitan area.

Julie Jacobson / AP Fish sucked into Indian Point's water intake system swim against the current in a trough designed to send them back to the Hudson River in Buchanan, N.Y.

"What you're really talking about is a $1.5 billion hit on the company, and then it becomes an economic decision whether they want to stay here," he says. He believes talk of cooling towers is "a backdoor attempt by some to shut down Indian Point."

A recent ruling dealt at least a small blow to Entergy's efforts. The state Department of Environmental Protection, which is pushing for cooling towers, said the simple fact that so many fish eggs are destroyed each year at Indian Point is proof of an environmental impact, and Entergy can no longer maintain that it's not adversely affecting the river.

There's still months of argument ahead, but the ruling could be influential.

"We'll be very interested to see how that comes out," says Katie Nekola, an attorney for Clean Wisconsin, which failed to force cooling towers at the Oak Creek plant on Lake Michigan but won a $105 million settlement.

MORE FROM ENVIRONMENT

Environment Section Front

Biggest climate meeting in history begins   EPA: Greenhouse gases are harmful Wolf recovery at crossroads in Southwest Timber program becomes vast entitlement Promises, not treaty, likely at climate summit Mass climate rally in London streets NBC World Blog: Copenhagen preview Obama shifts date of climate summit visit Smuggled kangaroos freed; man arrested South Pole trekkers on the hot, cold grind Environment Section Front   Add Environment headlines to your news reader: