EPA seeks way stop plant's killing of fish

Fixing the problem also will help Lake Erie's fishing industry.
TOLEDO BLADE
To the naked eye, it looks like an ecological disaster: thousands of dead fish near the shoreline of Lake Erie's Maumee Bay east of Toledo, Ohio.
Much to the chagrin of commercial fisherman Frank Reynolds, though, it's a sight that occurs far too often -- almost daily, he says, near the intake of FirstEnergy Corp.'s coal-fired Bay Shore power plant.
Bay Shore is not alone. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates nearly 550 large power plants across the country -- those with cooling-water capacities of 50 million gallons a day or more -- are needlessly killing off fish.
Fish die because they get caught up in the powerful intake currents. Larger fish bang against grated screens hard and die from injury, fatigue or starvation. Smaller fish and minnows elude the screens and pass through the plant. A few survive the trauma, but most die, officials said.
Demanding change
The problem -- long presumed to be one of the unfortunate trade-offs of generating electricity -- may be older than the 32-year history of the nation's Clean Water Act itself. But the EPA, in responding to a court order brought on by those hoping to minimize losses, announced earlier this year it will use the Clean Water Act as its legal muscle for protecting fish.
In rules published July 9, the agency said power plants have until the fall of 2007 to make the kind of adjustments necessary to reduce the number of fish pinned against intake screens by 80 percent to 95 percent, whether that means installing expensive cooling towers or simply readdressing their long-standing flow regimes and plant screens. Cooling towers lessen the impact because the intake need is not nearly as great.
EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said in February that such improvements could enhance the nation's recreational and commercial fishing industries by some $80 million a year by annually protecting more than 200 million pounds of fish.
Great Lakes fishing
The requirements are embraced by Reynolds and Sandy Bihn of the Maumee Bay Association, a citizens group that knows the value of western Lake Erie's coveted fishing industry. Western Lake Erie has long been viewed by scientists as the most productive part of the Great Lakes because it is the warmest and shallowest lake area. The lake, as a whole, produces more fish than the other four Great Lakes combined.
Bay Shore draws water from the mouth of the Maumee River, in an area where much of that massive tributary's spawning occurs. To the north lies Detroit Edison Co.'s coal-fired power plant in Monroe, one of the nation's largest. It draws water from the River Raisin. Spokesmen for both utilities have said their companies will do whatever it takes to keep their plants in compliance.
FirstEnergy is in the process of hiring contractors to do a study that is expected to take more than three years. Detroit Edison also has just started to assess the situation at Monroe and its other plants.