High Court Case Tests Power Plants' Water Rules

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97651580&ft=1&f=1003

The U.S. Supreme Court hears an important environmental case Tuesday, testing whether utilities must use the best technology available to minimize harm to the nation's waterways. At issue is the physical impact on fish and the financial impact on companies.

The nation's 550 power plants use water — lots of water in some instances — that comes from lakes and rivers. Each day, more than 214 billion gallons of water is sucked into power plants across the country. That's tens of trillions of gallons each year.

The water cools the steam used in the electric generating process. And all the fish and aquatic organisms in the water are killed in the process.

In modern plants, little or no water is needed. Instead, the cooling is done with air, or sometimes with a different water system that uses small amounts of water and recycles it. The question in this case involves whether older plants must install new technology to minimize the harm to the nation's lakes and rivers.

The companies say installing the best technology is too expensive — the Bush administration adopted a rule that would allow utilities to get a variance from the Environmental Protection Agency if they can show that the cost of complying is greater than the environmental benefits.

[madokie]

1. I asked the question a few weeks ago about the quantity of water that a nuclear power plant

uses in comparison to a coal power plant and I was assured by a poster here that there was no difference. Since then I've read that there is a big difference between the two. I was at the time questioning the sanity of building more nuclear power plants when fresh water is becoming more and more limited. So I am interested in how this turns out.

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2. Court urged to side with power plants against fish

http://news.ino.com/headlines/?newsid=6894818248790

The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to let the nation's older power plants draw in billions of gallons of water for cooling without installing technology that would best protect fish and aquatic organisms.

Lawyers for the government and electricity producers urged the justices to overturn a lower court ruling that says the Clean Water Act does not let the government pit the cost of upgrading an estimated 554 power plants against the benefits of protecting fish and aquatic organisms when limiting water use.

They argued that for the last 30 years the Environmental Protection Agency has weighed the costs of controlling power plant withdrawals from rivers, streams and other waterways against the benefits of saving more aquatic wildlife in setting technology requirements.


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Richard Lazarus, an attorney representing environmental groups, said that by comparing costs to benefits the EPA has underregulated water intake from power plants.

"EPA has no authority in any circumstance to decide that fish aren't worth a certain amount of cost," he said. Lazarus, however, said that other parts of the law let the agency evaluate the burden on industry.