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Cooling Trend
Power plants face changes to protect ocean life

By Lisa Wells
OC Voice Staff Writer

Once-through cooling, a process that sucks in large quantities of cold, ocean water in order to cool down the excess heat of power generating plants, may be on its way out in the United States

That development will affect the antiquated AES power plant which has been operating since 1958 at the corner of Newland Ave. and Pacific Coast Hwy in Huntington Beach.

Desalination plant developers have found economic benefits in using the abundant water once-through cooling captures. But if the legislative trend continues and moves power plant cooling methods away from once-through cooling, desalination plants—such as the Poseidon Desalination Plant planned for Huntington Beach, which would use the current AES cooling system—will have to find alternative ways, with low environmental impact, to extract sea water.

In California approximately 17 billion gallons of coastal seawater is sucked into 21 power plants each day, an amount that would drain the San Francisco Bay in about 100 days.

The practice is now known to negatively impact marine species populations by indiscriminately flushing the water of eggs, larvae and adults,which are killed as they become “entrained” in the power plant infrastructure. Other adult species are killed as they become trapped on intake screens as the water gets drawn into the power plant.

The method is currently conventional, but once-through cooling was ruled inconsistent with the Clean Water Act (CWA) in January by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The lawsuit, brought against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmentalists, found several aspects of the EPA’s rule governing cooling water intake systems at power plants throughout the country are in conflict with the CWA.

In 2005, the California Energy Commission (CEC) published a report, “Issues and Environmental Impacts Associated with Once-Through Cooling at California’s Coastal Power Plants,” that said once-through cooling was partly responsible for marine species population degradation.

The report found that since the early 1970s, 60 percent of marine species have declined. “California marine and estuarine environments are in decline and the once-through cooling systems of coastal power plants are contributing to the degradation of our coastal waters,” the report stated.

John Largier, professor of coastal oceanography at UC Davis and a contributor to the 2005 report, is currently conducting research for a follow-up CEC report that will be available in about six months. His research focuses on mortality of individual species by assessing the proportional loss of larvae and determining what percentage of a total population is being killed by entrainment.

Since the previous report was published, and since the lawsuit found once-through cooling in violation of the CWA, Largier says, “Entrainment is bad, but we don’t really know how bad it is. As a researcher I’d like to continue to create data that can be available worldwide.”

As far as policy goes, he thinks, “There’s going to be changes, the wildcard is desal [desalination] and whether or not it’s going to fashionable. If that happens, desal may let the power plants slide out of this one.”

Locally, the report showed that Huntington Beach’s AES Huntington Beach plant at Pacific Coast Highway and Newland takes in 500 million gallons of seawater each day. But compared to nuclear power plants, that’s minimal. Nuclear power plants require much more water. For example, the San Onofre nuclear power plant takes in 2,580 million gallons per day.

In 2006 The California State Lands Commission passed a resolution to eliminate once-through cooling in the State of California. The resolution states that after 20 years, the State Lands Commission will not lease land to plants that use once-through cooling.

“It’s the end of once-through cooling systems in the U.S.,” Geever said, referring to the CWA lawsuit and the State Lands Commission resolution, adding that “AES is fighting the changes tooth and nail.”

Since Poseidon planned to use AES’ once-through intake system for sea water desalination, Geever said it will be interesting to see if the company will be able to lease the water intake system that was slated for energy production. Poseidon’s hearing with the State Lands Commission on leasing the intake apparatus will be on October 3.

Poseidon representatives did not return calls by the OC Voice for comment by press time.

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