Dirty Energy Kills Fish By ROBERT UKEILEY
Robert Ukeiley
( rukeiley@igc.org) is a
lawyer who represents
environmental nonprofits in Clean Air Act
litigation affecting
energy issues.
Leveling the economic playing field for renewable energy
and energy efficiency involves more than just internalizing the cost of air pollution, including global warming
pollution. Dirty sources of energy such as coal, nuclear and
natural gas have a whole host of negative impacts throughout
their lifecycles. Water impact is a major one.
Regardless of how they’re heated, steam-turbine generating
units use a tremendous amount of water for cooling. This creates significant negative economic and ecological impacts and
creates energy security risks. Even in a place as wet as Georgia,
a recent drought meant that a huge nuclear power plant almost
had to shut down for want of water.
Sections of the Ohio River flow
at more than 110ºF (44ºC),
creating dead zones for aquatic life.
Coal, nuclear and natural gas are not only huge consumers
of water, they also generate water pollution, including thermal
pollution. Sections of the Ohio River flow at more than 110ºF
(44ºC) because billions of gallons of heated water discharge
from coal-fired power plants, creating dead zones that cannot
be traversed by some aquatic life.
Dirty power plants kill countless fish and amphibians by
squashing them against intake screens (“impingement”) or
sucking them into the cooling system (“entrainment”). Unfortunately, on April 1, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of
Entergy Corp. v. Riverkeeper, refused to strike down the weak
impingement and entrainment rules created by the Bush
administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. There
are two bright spots. One is that the U.S. Supreme Court did
not give final approval to the rules. The Obama administration’s EPA could find that the benefits of saving aquatic life
outweigh the cost of modernizing to safer cooling systems. The
other good news is that the rules for new power plant cooling
systems are much more stringent and have survived judicial
scrutiny. The only question remaining is whether the rules for
new power plants will be faithfully implemented. ST
