Monday, June 16, 2014

Power plant may be killing fish

From the Times Ledger:

The Sierra Club is asking a judge from Queens Supreme Court to require that the state Department of Environmental Conservation review the issuing of the first water withdrawal permit given to the Ravenswood Power Plant because the organization claims withdrawing water from the East River is killing fish.

The challenge by the grassroots environmental group along with the Hudson River Fisherman was filed last Friday. The authorization by the state agency allows the Long Island City-based plant to use up to 1.5 billion gallons of water a day from the East River. The permit is valid until 2017.

According to the Sierra Club, the DEC failed to order the power plant to have a closed-cycle cooling system in place.

“I hope the judge decides to have a hearing on this,” said Jonathan Geballe, attorney for the organization. “We believe we have a strong case.”

Geballe calculates that in about two months the Queens Supreme Court judge will make a decision.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You should have quoted the part where they said they don't want to shutdown the plant, they just want its owner, TransCanada, to build a closed cooling system to cut the impact on fish by 98%. It tells a different story. And it seems reasonable. The facility was built in the 60s, but isn't going away anytime soon. It was just expanded ten years ago. It was sold for almost three billion dollars six years ago. If it's around for decades to come as that would imply, it doesn't seem unreasonable to make it cleaner where possible.

Anonymous said...

Hey, you kill them, you eat them!

Anonymous said...

let the fish live...humans do not count. they do not need power to cool in the summer and keep warm in the winter, anyway

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