[UPDATED WITH DECISION] Listen here: Baykeeper on Once-Through Cooling at State Water Resources Control Board
Molly Peterson
Southern California Public Radio
12/14/2010
Environmentalists have won a victory at the State Water Resources Control Board in an ongoing skirmish over coastal power plant policy.
Once-through cooling is a practice in which power plants suck in sea water to cool equipment - then spit it back out again. Over five years, the state - with the opinions of power plants and environmentalists - developed plans to end OTC. Then some power plants said they couldn't do it. Some sued. The LADWP said it would be infeasible.
So, state water staffers had written up an amendment to existing policy that softened up the deadline by which the OTC had to end. Today, the board failed to passs it.
"I was happily surprised that they didn't," NRDC's Noah Long said.
Board Chair Charles Hoppin abstained. Tam Doduc, Frances Spivy-Weber, and Art Baggett voted to keep the once-through cooling policy as is. Apparently, the SWRQB is going to let the implementation plans shake out a bit.
Long says board member Tam Doduc commented that she "was sympathetic to concerns on all sides." There's some interest at the board in checking the LADWP's implementation plan first. But it seems the point will be to make plans using the policy the board just passed in May.
"It's not a big deviation at all," Long said. "The extent of the deviation was they were pushing to evaluate LADWP first - and do it before they had planned to under the original policy."
(It's still probably a listen to check out Liz Crosson's interview, below - she lays out the dispute pretty well.)
There's still a live lawsuit by power plants against the state. Some environmental groups have moved to intervene in the lawsuit and defend it, so this OTC stuff will go on for a while. At least as long as it takes me to school my editor Cheryl Devall on the fact that once-through cooling is a legitimate thing.
I did an email interview with the DWP a little while ago about once-through cooling and how the utility calculates its potential cost to customers. I'll have that up as soon as I can.
The State Water Resources Control Board today considered whether to modify a recently-adopted policy pertaining to once-through cooling - a practice used by coastal power plants in which they suck sea water in to their plants and spit it out, with almost all the sea life in it dead.
I'm hearing that the board might have denied the amendment sought by power plants that would delay the date by which they have to end their practice.
