Billions Of Fish Eggs Die In Power Plants

Syracuse
Oct 21 2008
ap.org

BUCHANAN, N.Y. (AP) — 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 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 sacrificed in large numbers each year to the cooling systems of power plants around the country.

Environmentalists say power plants needlessly kill fish and fish eggs with their cooling systems. 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. Power generators and environmentalists are watching the outcome closely 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 U.S. power plants and factories use water from rivers, lakes, oceans and creeks as a coolant. At Indian Point plant in New York, 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.

As a result, billions of fish eggs and fish are lost. California power plants kill an estimated 79 billion fish and fish eggs each year. New York officials say that 1.2 billion fish and eggs are destroyed each year at Indian Point.

Most of the casualties are eggs, and for many species, it takes thousands of eggs to result in one adult fish.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration, which counts only species that are valuable for commerce or recreation, 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.

Environmentalists note that even young fish usually contribute to the ecosystem as food for larger fish and birds. 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," says 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 any

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