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A resolution passed the House of Representatives Wednesday that aims to protect fish from the dangers of certain kinds of industrial cooling systems.
Rep. Gregory Hastings, R-Millsboro, Rep. William Oberle, R-Beechers Lot, and Sen. George Bunting, D-Bethany Beach, penned a concurrent resolution with input from environmentalists.
The resolution urges the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) to declare closed-cycle cooling systems are the best technology available for water-cooling intakes.
Once-through cooling systems on power plants and other structures take in water to absorb heat and discharge the heated water back into the original source. This system can wreak havoc on aquatic life by killing fish and crabs in the cooling systems themselves and by disrupting the ecology of the waterway by heating it.
Environmentalists advocate closed-cycle cooling systems as the best way to achieve cooling with minimum impact on the environment. Closed-system cooling structures recycle the same water, adding new only to replace what has evaporated, using less water than once-through systems.
Chris Bason, science and technical coordinator for the Center for the Inland Bays, said the resolution shows people support restoring Delaware’s fisheries, particularly in the Inland Bays.
Maya van Rossum, Delaware Riverkeeper, said, “The quantity of fish killed that can be reduced by using a closed-cycle approach is up to 99 percent. There is no excuse for a facility to be using once-through cooling systems at this point.”
She said closed-cycle cooling is a proven technology that can be put on existing facilities. The economic and ecological benefits are worth the investment to upgrade, van Rossum said.
Structures that use once-through cooling systems, such as the Indian River power plant, can draw in hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day. That can result in the deaths of millions of fish and have a negative impact on the local ecoystem as well as the fishery, the resolution says.
Bason said, “Each year, the cooling water intake of the Indian River power plant kills millions upon millions of fish and hundreds of thousands of crabs. For our small bays, these numbers are astounding.”
The loss of commercial and recreational fishing as a result could mean a loss of millions of dollars per year for the state, said the resolution.
Bunting said a lot of people in the area are conservation-minded and try to take care of the fishery, putting back fish that are too small and minding the limits. “Then you have a plant that kills millions of fish per year and that’s unsettling, especially when better technology is available,” he said.
NRG Energy spokeswoman Lori Neuman said one unit on the power plant already has closed-cycle cooling and her company is working with DNREC to meet regulations on Unit 3. Unit 1 and Unit 2 are scheduled to be shut down in 2010 and 2011.
Hastings said he is trying to advance efforts to make the power plant cleaner and more environmentally friendly.
Bason said, “Closed-cycled cooling would also go a very long way to improve the condition of Island Creek which receives thermal discharge.”
Richard Schneider, a member of Citizens for a Clean Environment, worked with resolution sponsors on crafting the document. “The idea is to protect this great natural resource that we have – fish and aquatic life in Delaware waters,” he said, noting that facilities with once-through cooling systems kill fish indiscriminately, regardless of their species or age.
Bason said recent research suggests a healthy fishery can lead to improvements in other important parts of the ecosystem, such as sea grass.
He said requiring closed-cycle cooling is long overdue and will further multiple goals of the state-adopted Inland Bays Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan.
Schneider said the resolution, if passed, would apply to facilities across the state.
Early this year, the effects of once-through cooling on aquatic life were the topic of heated discussion at a DNREC public hearing for a pollution discharge permit for the Indian River power plant.
Data collected by a consultant for NRG Energy, the plant’s owner, on the number of fish killed by the plant’s intake was reviewed by local scientists who found the consultant compared the number of fish killed in the Inland Bays to the Atlantic coastal fishery.
The consultant’s report said the plant had no appreciable impact on the fishery of the Inland Bays.
The Fisheries Section of DNREC sent a report to inform the record for that pollution discharge permit and included a letter saying the section concluded closed-cycle cooling was the best available technology to mitigate the effect of the plant on aquatic life in the area.
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