| EPA loosens ruling
on power plant fish kills
By Greg Cannon
Times Herald-Record
February 18, 2004
Two weeks after a federal court ruled that restoring fish
habitats is not an acceptable way for new power plants to
deal with fish kills, the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency
said that it's fine for existing plants.
In a rule finalized Monday, the EPA set national standards
for the pipes that suck cooling water from rivers, a process
that traps fish against screens and kills fish eggs that make
it through the screens but die from the heat. Affected plants
include Indian Point in Buchanan and the Danskammer and Roseton
plants in the Town of Newburgh.
A local environmental group that was behind the decade-old
lawsuit that led to the new rule slammed it, saying it doesn't
go far enough to protect fish. Reed Super, a lawyer for Garrison-based
Riverkeeper, said the rule's standards are vague and the means
for achieving them weak.
The group was pressing for an end to restoration and a requirement
that plants install cooling towers. The towers reduce fish
kills by cutting the amount of cooling water needed to a relative
trickle.
But Indian Point officials said the towers are not a magic
bullet. "To us, what's important about the ruling is
that the EPA sees that cooling towers are not the best thing
to do for existing plants," said plant spokesman Jim
Steets.
He said the reductions in fish kills called for in the new
rule might be met with filters like the ones already installed
at the plant. Cooling towers are already the rule for new
plants, a rule that was further tightened earlier this month
by a the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2ndCircuit. The court
ruled that fish restoration doesn't jibe with the federal
Clean Water Act because it tries to fix a problem rather than
preventing or minimizing it in the first place.
EPA officials say there's a big difference between plants
that are up and running and ones that haven't been built yet.
Despite the effectiveness of cooling towers, the high cost
of retrofitting existing plants with them kept the EPA from
requiring them.
Absent cooling towers, "We do feel that restoration
has a place, and it does meet the goals of the Clean Water
Act and we're very comfortable here," Geoff Grubbs, director
of EPA's Office of Science and Technology, said in a telephone
press conference yesterday. Riverkeeper said it will challenge
the rule in court.
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