EPA Limits Cooling Water Intake at Factories, Offshore Wells

WASHINGTON, DC, November 3, 2004 (ENS) - As the result of a settlement in a 1995 lawsuit with environmentalists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to protect fish, shellfish and other aquatic life from being destroyed by cooling water intake structures at manufacturing facilities and new offshore oil and gas facilities nationwide.

This is the third and last in a series of rules the EPA committed to write in a 1995 consent decree agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the conservation organization Riverkeeper, Riverkeeper v. Browner, and other environmental groups. Cooling water intakes for power producers were covered in the previous two rules.

For any existing facility, EPA is proposing three options for public comment - either setting requirements for facilities that withdraw more than 50 million gallons of water per day, 100 million gallons a day from one of the Great Lakes or in coastal areas, or more than 200 million gallons of water per day.

Requirements to reduce mortality would be determined based on waterbody type and by the manner in which the animals are killed. Aquatic organisms too small to be screened out are drawn through a plant’s cooling system and are killed by what the EPA calls "entrainment." Larger organisms become trapped on intake screens and are killed or injured by "impingement."

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cadets count crabs that have been entrained during dredging on the Columbia River. (Photo courtesy PNL)

Depending upon the options chosen, the EPA estimates that this proposal would protect between 30 million and 50 million aquatic organisms annually from death or injury, depending on the size and number of facilities covered by the rule.

The benefits to commercial and recreational fishing range from $1.3 million to $1.9 million per year. The agency says, "There are likely to be other benefits, such as more robust and productive aquatic ecosystems at these facilities."

EPA estimates the proposed rule would affect between 19 and 136 existing facilities and have compliance costs between $17 million and $47 million per year.

One hundred twenty-four new offshore and coastal oil and gas facilities would also be regulated at a cost of $3.2 million.

The rule would cost state and federal agencies between $500,000 and $1 million annually to administer, for a total annual cost of the rule to both governments and facilities of between $21 million and $51 million, the agency said.

In comments on Phase I of the three rules, Riverkeeper and the other environmental groups, which include the Natural Resources Defense Council, described the extent of the problem.

"Every year in the United States, cooling water intakes structures kill a staggering number of fish and other aquatic organisms," the environmental groups wrote. "Trillions of adult and juvenile fish and shellfish, larvae, eggs and other organisms are killed as a result of being sucked through industrial cooling systems or being trapped against intake screens. U.S. facilities consume more than 70 trillion gallons of cooling water annually, and a single electric generating facility can kill millions of fish in just a few short weeks or months. But current technology exists to drastically reduce or eliminate these fish kills."

The EPA also characterizes the damage as serious. "The withdrawal of cooling water from waters of the U.S. harms billions of aquatic organisms each year, including fish, fish larvae and eggs, crustaceans, shellfish, sea turtles, and marine mammals. Most damage is done to early life stages of fish and shellfish."

This new proposal would require existing manufacturing facilities to meet performance standards to reduce the number of organisms pinned against parts of the cooling water intake structure by 80 to 95 percent, the EPA said.

Offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico (Photo courtesy MMS)

To offer these facilities flexibility to comply, facilities would have several compliance alternatives to meet the performance standards. The alternatives include using existing technologies, selecting additional fish protection technologies - such as screens with fish return systems - and using restoration measures.

But the option to use restoration measures has already been successfully challenged in court with regard to Phase I of the rulemaking.

The first rule, Phase I, established requirements for new power plants and factories, requiring closed-cycle cooling technology, which reduces fish kills by approximately 95 percent.

Riverkeeper and other environmental groups challenged aspects of that rule and, on February 3, 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled that the EPA exceeded its authority in allowing compliance through “restoration measures” like fish restocking, rather than regulating intakes directly, based on the best technology available as the Clean Water Act requires.

The second rule, Phase II, addressed large existing electric generating plants designed to use more than 50 million gallons of cooling water per day.

In July, Riverkeeper and other environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging Phase II. It charges that the EPA has failed to protect fisheries and has violated the Clean Water Act and Congress’s “best technology” mandate in several respects:

1. the rule sets a fish kill reduction standard of only 60 percent, far short of that which could be achieved by closed-cycle cooling

2. EPA exceeded its authority by sanctioning fish stocking and habitat replacement measures in lieu of protective technology, despite a recent federal court decision invalidating their use for intake structure impacts

3. the rule includes illegal variances based on site-specific costs and benefits

4. the rule is overbroad in its definition of “existing facility,” thereby allowing many new facilities to meet the Phase II requirements rather than the more stringent Phase I new facility requirements

Public comments on this Phase III proposal should be submitted no later than 120 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Information on this proposal and other cooling water intake regulation are available at: http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/316b/