Power plants withdraw nearly a hundred trillion gallons of water per year from America's rivers and bays in order to cool their boilers. The process causes enormous ecological damage: countless small fish and other aquatic organisms are ingested into the power plants' cooling systems where they are subject to a variety of deadly thermal, mechanical, and toxic shocks; the water that has been used to cool the boilers is then discharged at significantly elevated temperatures, turning the surrounding waterbody into an oxygen-starved "deadzone". Thirty-five years ago, Congress ordered EPA to ensure that power plants and other industrial facilities use cooling systems that reflect the "best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact". However, when EPA issued the Phase II CWIS rule in 2004, it authorized the continued use of "once-through cooling" at many existing power plants. Because a power plant with once-through cooling does not recycle any of the water used to condense its boiler steam, it needs to withdraw as much as two billion gallons per day directly from a source waterbody. Once-through cooling is used by roughly half of the power plants in the United States. Almost all of the other plants in the country use "recirculated cooling systems" that withdraw only 5% as much water.
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CATF Brief Urges Court to Overturn Inadequate Cooling Water Regulation
EPA's decision to not require recirculated cooling systems at existing power plants was based in part on its assertion that doing so would threaten the reliability of the country's energy supply. CATF challenged that assertion in the amicus curiae brief it filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Court Remands Cooling Water Regulations
In a victory for the environment, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected EPA's determination that once-through cooling satisfies the Clean Water Act's "best technology available" requirement at existing power plants.
