New York has made an effort to de crease the number of winter flounder killed by power plant intake valves.
At the end of last year, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation made a decision that dramatically will decrease the destruction of fish off Long Island’s South Shore, including millions of winter flounder, a species whose numbers are at a fraction of their historic levels.
The DEC has issued a draft permit that will require National Grid to outfit its E.F. Barrett Power Plant with equipment to reduce its destruction of marine life by 95 percent. The plant is in Island Park (Hempstead).
Of the one billion fish, fish eggs and larvae killed each year by the five-decades-old plant, more than 30 million are winter flounder, whose stocks are so decimated that last May the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission required New York and other Mid-Atlantic states to impose drastic reductions to their commercial and recreational harvest.
The Barrett station alone accounts for 40 percent of the winter flounder destroyed by New York’s power plants. A yearlong study counted 26,800,000 winter flounder eggs and larvae drawn into the plant’s obsolete cooling system, and 5,300 adult winter flounder trapped on intake screens.
The solution is replacing destructive, antiquated cooling systems that withdraw and then discharge water — called “once-through” cooling — with “closed cycle cooling” systems that draw in water once and recycle it, much like a car radiator. The result is a 95-percent drop in the amount of water that the plants use, and a 95-percent drop in the amount of aquatic life harmed and killed by the plant. In fact, if any of the Long Island power plants was built today, it would be required to use this technology.
With its year-end decision to require closed cycle cooling at Hempstead’s Barrett plant, the state may save many millions of Long Island fish every year. But this is just the second time DEC has issued a permit requiring closed cycle cooling. Now it needs to do the same at Long Island’s other four plants, and statewide.
