KILLING PEOPLE: The EPA says 95 DELAWARE people die every year due to power plant pollution
http://www.awm.delaware.gov/Info/Regs/Documents/a3cc00fba8104f6684cbe04928572585CorrespondenceDHSSletter.pdf
KILLING FISH: Archive for February, 2008
“UPDATED: DNREC’s Blatant Disregard For People, Aquatic Life And The Environment Leaves ME Speechless.”…
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
…
…”What’s a few million dead fish every year between friends? Or between Delaware’s worst polluter and the local citizens they stick it to every day?”…
DNREC had a meeting Thursday night in Millsboro and the topic was the permit that allows the Indian River Power Plant to suck in and discharge its surrounding waters for cooling, a practice that results in millions of fish, shellfish and other assorted aquatic life killed every year.
In a two year study done for NRG Energy, Inc., the company that owns the plant, a whopping 600,000 blue crab, 543,733 croaker, 834,775 winter flounder and over 3.2 million bay anchovy were killed along with thousands of spot and Atlantic menhaden.
Interestingly, other fish like striped bass, trout, sea bass, minnows, rays, sharks, etc…were not even included in the study, because they’re not considered “Representative Important Species.” Yeah, you read that right, rockfish and bluefish aren’t considered “Representative Important Species.”
Alan Muller of Green Delaware Thursday night in Millsboro. In this picture he’s holding up the State’s schedule of public hearings noting that the hearing we were all sitting in was mysteriously missing from the list.
And this is classic, DNREC seems to think that the huge number of fish killed every year by the plant poses no “appreciable harm to fish and shellfish of the Indian River Watershed.” But when Alan Muller of Green Delaware questioned the DNREC officials about what “appreciable harm” even meant, they had to admit they didn’t even know… AUDIO clip that you have to hear to believe.
Then Muller brings up the pesky fact that DNREC’s permit allows NRG Engery to include “1,800 pounds of oil and grease into that discharge.” And that basically under the permit the plant could intentionally dump oil and grease into the waterways and it would be “legal.” (I know what you’re thinking, “Maria has lost her mind, she just can’t have that right,” but I’m correct and here’s the horrifying AUDIO CLIP to prove it. Enjoy the part where the DNREC guy trys to thank Muller for his “comment” without answering his question).
Then there was John Austin who pointed out the high levels of arsenic found around the plant and talked about the increased cancer risk associated with eating fish exposed to the toxin. Austin went on to say that the permit proposed by DNREC doesn’t even address the arsenic levels in the Indian River Power Plant’s discharge. AUDIO
Greg Hastings was at the hearing, and he was less than thrilled with what he witnessed.
“If I tell you I’m disappointed…that’s an understatement.” - 41st District Representative Greg Hastings AUDIO
Did I even mention yet that the permit the Indian River Power Plant has been operating under expired 16 years ago and has been extended “administratively” ever since? Or how DNREC judges the fish kills to be acceptable by comparing them to the number of fish in the entire Atlantic fishery? Or the huge amounts of heavy metals released in the discharge?
And let me just add this: Sussex Countians endure the Indian River Power Plant polluting our air, water, land and the fish and shellfish we eat, while NRG Energy sells the power generated by the Plant into the grid. On top of that, DNREC, the state agency that is supposed to be protecting the fine people of the State of Delaware, doles out permits to the plant that are so permissive that NRG Energy can basically do anything and still be in compliance. But don’t you ever catch and keep a fish that’s one inch too short or you can be fined and/or arrested.
So everyone breathe a sigh of relief because DNREC is looking out for our waterways and the local fish we eat…but please don’t breathe too deeply because DNREC monitors our air quality, and I was being totally sarcastic about the whole “breathe a sigh of relief” thing.
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January 18th, 2008 5:59 PM Eastern
Delaware Power Plant
by Laura Ingle [Fox News]
Tonight we will air the story on the Indian River Power Plant we shot this week in Delaware. (Special Report 6p eastern) Rehoboth Beach boasts beautiful beaches, relaxed retirees, and a massive power plant that locals say chugs river water and belches steam and smoke as far as the eye can see.
I talked with Joan Deaver, who is a concerned resident and the President of Citizens for a Better Sussex, who summed up the situation by saying “this is our 800 pound gorilla in the living room. It effects our fish, it affects our people it affects our air. It’s a real problem.”
My favorite part of shooting this story, was taking a tour of the area by boat with a local man named Mike Short. Mike has been so involved with following the story of the power plant, that he also made a documentary of it which is all over You Tube. He was nice enough to get one of his boats from his family’s marina business and put it in the water for us, so that we could shoot some amazing up close video of the plant from the river.
Check out the story tonight, and look for it to repeat throughout the night on Fox. I’ll try to get the video posted here on the blog too once it airs in case you miss it live. Below is a picture our producer Harriet Taylor took with her camera of me interviewing Mike Short, and of our camera man Tommy Chiu who braved the freezing cold conditions to take amazing video.”…
Smoke on the water….
by Laura Ingle
… and fire in the sky.
Sorry, I’ve had that song in my head ever since we had a chance to see the Indian River Power Plant from a boat yesterday on our shoot here in Delaware. Because we were denied an interview with the powers that be at the plant, which would have allowed us access to the grounds, we had to take to the water to get an up close look, and the pictures we got for you are amazing.”…
Indian River center of fish debate
By JEFF MONTGOMERY, The News Journal
Posted Thursday, January 3, 2008
NRG's Indian River power plant is likely to be the next battleground in a regional war over fishery losses to industrial and power plant cooling water intakes, state regulators and environmental groups predicted Wednesday.
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control officials said several groups or individuals have asked for a public hearing on Indian River's draft wastewater discharge permit.
"There's significant interest in it, so we will have a hearing," said Peder Hansen, who directs DNREC's surface water discharges section. He estimated that a hearing could take place as early as next month.
Much of the attention has focused on the power plant's cooling water intakes, which destroy millions of fish, crabs and larvae each year.
NRG draws as much as 350 million gallons of water daily from the nearby Indian River, using it once for cooling before returning heated flows to the environment.
Although a company-commissioned study concluded that the operation had no "adverse impact," the plant chewed up the equivalent of 800,000 year-old winter flounder during one year studied, more than 518,000 year-old Atlantic croaker and nearly 2.7 million bay anchovy. Those figures assumed that huge numbers of tiny fry and larvae would have survived to age 1 had they not been sucked into the plant.
State Sen. George H. Bunting Jr., D-Bethany Beach, is among those who asked for a hearing. "Here we've gone to a great extent in Delaware to come up with a fishing license so we know how many fish are taken in our waters, and those intakes alone kill more fish than all the fishermen I know in my district will ever catch," Bunting said.
Several industries along the Delaware River employ similar and in some cases far larger "once-through" cooling systems, including Conectiv's Edge Moor power plant in Wilmington, the Delaware City Refinery and the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear complex.
The once-through process has come under increased attack by environmental groups after a federal court ruled last year that utilities must use "best available" technologies to protect fish.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency studies estimate that the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear plant destroys the equivalent of 347 million year-old fish annually. The same report ranked the Conectiv Edge Moor power plant and Valero Delaware City Refinery as having the second and third deadliest intakes, with about 158 million year-old equivalents for Conectiv and 73.4 million lost to the refinery.
Industries have argued that river ecosystems are not harmed by the fish losses, while ruling out cooling towers as too costly. Salem/Hope Creek's owners have estimated that cooling towers could cost $1 billion or more.
"The draft permit DNREC issued for NRG does not even attempt to require compliance" with Clean Water Act requirements for fish protection, Maya K. van Rossum, who directs the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said in a recent request for a hearing.
Van Rossum's group wants regulators to bar once-through cooling and order the use of cooling towers that recycle the water that NRG, Conectiv, Delaware City and Salem tap from rivers -- unless they can develop an equally effective alternative before their next five-year wastewater discharge permit expires.
Van Rossum said that the Indian River permit is an important symbol in the regional debate over cooling towers.
DNREC's current permit for the plant expired in 1992, with progress blocked until recently by disputes over the effect of the plant's heated water on the environment near its discharge. Federal and state negotiators recently developed a compromise proposal on temperature limits for plant discharges.
DNREC's Hansen said NRG's proposals for the temperature limits require more study. NRG had argued that it already has investigated the effects baywide and found that the environmental effects did not justify a cooling tower. EPA reviewers, however, have described past studies as "deficient."
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CapeGazette.com - Covering Delaware's Cape Region 302.645.7700
NRG seeking discharge permit
at Indian River power plant
By Leah Hoenen
Cape Gazette staff
NRG Energy has applied to renew a permit to discharge water and effluent from its Indian River power plant into the Indian River Bay.
If the permit is reissued, the company must complete a study and report to the state on its impact on aquatic life.
But comments have already been filed requesting a hearing before a permit is issued.
There are two major issues related to cooling power plants: large numbers of fish can be killed when the plants take in water, and the warm water that is discharged from once-through cooling systems can alter fish habits and threaten their health.
The two ways that fish can die in cooling systems are entrainment and impingement. Small fish that can fit through intake screens are carried through the entire system and are subject to high temperatures, often dying along the way. Larger fish can be impinged, pulled against screens by the velocity of the water going into the plant. If the screens are not rotated or washed off frequently, fish spend hours stuck against them and can be killed. Roy Miller of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) Fisheries section said that impingement is considered the worse of the two because mature fish perish.
Miller said the best way to handle entrainment and impingement is to install a closed cooling system, one in which the cooling water is contained in the system, not continuously taken in and released. “Those are the gold standard. We can judge other methods against them,” said Miller, who also said that only one of the cooling towers at the Dagsboro plant is a closed system.
Thermal discharge, warm water that has been used to cool plant boilers and then released into the environment, can alter the way fish behave, Miller said. In the summer, thermal effluent creates an area too warm for fish, which avoid it. In the winter, fish are drawn to the warm spot, which is dangerous because, should the plant shut down, the fish could be subject to cold shock.
When DNREC last issued a permit to NRG, the company had to study its effect on the entire bay. The study, required five years ago, did not ask for an investigation of localized environmental impacts, said Tony Hummel of DNREC’s Surface Water Discharges Section.
The state plans to reissue a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to NRG but this time wants a study of the impact of the plant on Island Creek and Ware Cove instead of the entire bay.
John Austin of Citizens for Clean Power submitted a request to DNREC for a public hearing in which he complains that NRG has not sufficiently studied the effects of thermal discharge in Island Creek. “This permit has been years in the process of being renewed. One would think adequate studies and controls could have been produced in that time,” he wrote. Austin also cited a 2004 declaration by the Environmental Protection Agency that Island Creek is an impaired waterway and called for an accelerated compliance schedule to be implemented for the plant.
NRG Energy said that the study it conducted for the last permit, which was reviewed by DNREC, the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Center for the Inland Bays, showed the plant caused no appreciable harm to the watershed.
Polluters who discharge point-source pollution into waterways are required to apply for a permit to do so every five years. Hummel said the results of the next study conducted by NRG would have an effect on the state’s decision to renew the permit when it expires.
The state is accepting requests in writing for a public hearing until Friday, Dec. 21. The requests must present specific concerns as to why the permit should be reconsidered. If DNREC Secretary John Hughes agrees that a public hearing is necessary, one will then be scheduled, with 20 days’ notice. Those wishing to file comments should send them to DNREC’s Surface Water Discharges Section, 89 Kings Highway, Dover, 19901.
Contact Leah Hoenen at leah@capegazette.com © Cape Gazette™ CapeGazette.com - Covering Delaware's Cape Region.