AES plant cool to change
Kristin Agostoni
Contra Costa Times
05/03/2010
AES Southland President Eric Pendergraft, who oversees the Redondo Beach plant and others in Long Beach and Huntington Beach, said those numbers need to be put into context, as many of the organisms that get pulled into the pipes might not have survived in nature anyway.
"The majority of fish have very high natural mortality rates," said Shane Beck of MBC Applied Environmental Sciences, which has done work for AES. "So you have fish that (produce) millions of eggs. The vast majority of those don't make it."
Nonetheless, Pendergraft said the company is committed to repowering at each of its Southern California sites to meet the mandate, though he's asked for extended deadlines. The plan calls for the Redondo Beach plant to comply by 2020.
"We can't comply without making major modifications, and that's what we plan to do, anyway," Pendergraft said. "We don't have an issue with the policy, we just need the schedule extended a little more.
"What we've proposed is that we'll be 50 percent compliant in 2020."
LADWP officials have expressed additional concerns, writing in a letter to the board that they object to a "one-size-fits-all focus" and believe the policy poses a "serious threat" to the agency's power supply.
Despite having deadlines extended for two of its facilities, the LADWP argues the proposed policy should permit extensions in excess of two years in the event of delays with regulatory permits.
And the latest draft of the policy has also sparked concerns among environmental groups, who fear it provides loopholes for plant operators who might not want to do much to change their operations.
In a letter last month signed by more than two dozen organizations, the writers said the policy "deals a blow both to the protection of our ocean, coast, bays and estuaries and also to the future of stakeholder collaboration."
Heal the Bay staff scientist Sarah Abramson Sikich said "to come out and see such a large change (from a draft circulated last year) was a big surprise and of great concern."
She and others take particular issue with revisions in the policy that let power plants choose one of two paths to compliance. The first track calls for plants to reduce their ocean-water intake flow rate by 93 percent, which is comparable to using a closed-cycle wet cooling system that relies on just 7 percent seawater.
The other choice, which has come under fire, is for power generators to reduce by a minimum of 83 percent the amount of marine organisms that are either sucked into cooling systems or are trapped against screening devices. That could mean some plants continue to use once-through cooling systems, though less frequently, or else relocate ocean intake pipes, add more screening devices, or use other technologies to achieve the reductions.
The environmental groups argue the revisions would allow plants to choose the less- restrictive standard without first demonstrating why they can't meet the tighter threshold. They describe the policy "as such a marked step backwards" that it fails to meet the intent of the Clean Water Act and state environmental laws.
Linda Sheehan of the California Coastkeeper Alliance said that last fall she considered a draft of once-through cooling rules "workable." Now, she said, "we view this as almost a complete rewrite of the policy."
Bishop, the board's chief deputy director, said the rule isn't intended to encourage plants to take the less-restrictive road.
"The changes came about based upon a number of comments that we received," he said.
And he disputed arguments comparing the mortality rates of organisms moving through intake pipes to those in nature.
"Ocean creatures are broad spawners. They put out a large amount of larvae," he said. "But that's part of the ecosystem other species live off those."
In the South Bay and Harbor Area, at least one power plant already has committed to cutting back its use of seawater.
