Dead Fish in Northport

There was a good-sized fish kill in Northport Bay over the weekend. The inner part of the bay was filled with dead mossbunkers, some of which were bleeding in a way that John Waldman, a fisheries biologist at Queens College, says he's never seen before. In an email he sent me yesterday afternoon, he said, "... the redness of these specimens is pretty amazing. I've seen mild hemmorhaging in stressed bunker but nothing like this."

John didn't witness it though. A fellow named Andrew Silver, an engineering geologist, told John about it and took pictures. Here's what Andrew said:

I was in the back of Northport Bay on Saturday and there were thousands of dead bunker washed up on the shore and in the spartina.

I found about 8 fish swimming in circles and three of the fish had bright red heads and tails – they looked like Koi!

I can only assume that this color results from the stresses associated with hypoxia, but hadn’t seen this displayed in bunker before.

The pictures (phone not camera) do not do justice to the intensity of the hemorrhaging. The color could be seen from 30 feet out. With the water temperature so high and the shallow nature of the back of the embayment (7 feet -8 feet at the most), I was pretty sure that the red was stress-related to anoxic conditions, however, I have never seen this in bunker and none of the hundreds of dead fish strewn about had this color. I thought that the lack of color in the dead fish was notable as well, –but I was about 2 hours out from low tide, and the fish were scattered through the tufts of spartina to the high tide line- so maybe the blood drained out of the cheeks, head and tail.

Dissolved oxygen in the main part of Long Island Sound has been higher (that is, better) than usual this summer, but shallow bays and harbors can easily lose virtually all their oxygen, especially when the water is very warm. If bunker epecially get trapped there, they suffocate. The picture belows shows one of the red fish that Andrew said were swimming in circles

U.S. Supreme Court Will Hear Riverkeeper Case Concerning Power Plants, Cooling Water, and Fish Kills. Millstone and Other Sound Plants Are Involved.

This blog is going to be a Broadwater-free zone for the next few days, I hope. With that I mind, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an important case in the long-term battle to limit the number of fish that are killed in the cooling water intakes of power plants, including the Millstone plant in Waterford and many others.

Soundkeeper Terry Backer tipped me off (he's a plaintiff in Riverkeeper v. EPA, one of the suits that was consolidated by the Supreme Court) and sent me a link to SCOTUSBlog, which explains the case:

The Court also announced it will rule on whether the Environmental Protection Agency may compare costs with benefits when it orders major electricity-generating plants to install new technology when they draw water out of rivers and streams to cool their turbines....

In the electric industry case, the Court actually consolidated three petitions for review, and limited its review to a question as it has been composed by the U.S. Solicitor General’s office in response to the petitions. Here is the question: “Whether 316(b) of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. 1326(b), authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to compare costs with benefits in determining the ‘best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact’ at cooling water intake structures.” One hour of oral argument will be scheduled in the combined cases of Entergy Corp. v. EPA (07-588), PSEG Fossil v. Riverkeeper (07-589), and Utility Water Act Group v. Riverkeeper (07-597).

The Court agreed to rule in those cases even though the Solicitor General had urged it not to do so. While arguing that the Second Circuit Court had been wrong in concluding that EPA could not make a cost-benefit analysis under the specific provision in the Clean Water Act, the SG also said that the EPA was conducting a new review that may take some months, and that review might change the shape of the legal dispute. The SG conceded, though, that electric-generating plants could well incur significant new costs in the interim, and might even have to shut down their facilities to retrofit their water-intake structures.

Although the electric companies had raised other issues beyond the cost-benefit question –whether EPA could offset environmental harms by restocking the fish supply or improving aquatic habitat in the streams, and whether EPA could impose new technology requirements on existing plants as well as new ones — the Court did not agree to hear those.

The cases granted on Monday will be heard in the new Term starting Oct. 6.

There's an earlier post of mine about the Appellate Division's decision here. If you search "Millstone" in the search blog box above, you'll find a bunch of other posts as well.

Still Trying to Figure Out How to Kill Fewer Fish at the Millstone Nuke Plant

The Connecticut DEP is still trying to figure out what to do about the water that the Millstone nuke plant, in Waterford, draws in from Long Island Sound for cooling. In January, a federal court ruled that power plants had to figure out a better system, because too many fish were being killed (background info here). Here's what the New London Day reports today:

The step, depending on how it is implemented, could require an expensive technological overhaul at many plants, including Millstone. It could include reducing the flow of water used from Long Island Sound or deploying costly, large cooling towers that use significantly less water by recycling what they do use, thereby putting much less strain on the aquatic environment.

The story also includes these two paragraphs, which seem to contradict each other:

According to the DEP, 30 years of ecological monitoring by Northeast Utilities, the previous owner of Millstone, and Dominion show that the discharge of water from Millstone has not adversely affected the Sound.

When Millstone takes in water from the Sound, that water flows into the plant through a large grate, which traps fish and other sea life and returns it to the Sound by way of a vertical conveyor belt. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission study has found that winter flounder larvae were too small to be trapped by the system and died from heat inside the plant.

The nuke plants have not adversely affected the Sound but they're killing winter flounder. Dead winter flounder seems like an adverse affect, but maybe that's just my interpretation.

The cooling water, by the way, flows through the part of the plant that is not radioactive.

Twenty Years Ago Today, the Sound Was Dying

I pulled an old memo out of my file this morning with the heading, "New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Fact Sheet. Long Island Sound Fish Kills/Anoxia. July 18 - August 7, 1987." It's a good reminder of what went on exactly 20 years ago.

Here's some of what it says under the headings "Fish Kills" and "Lobster Pot Mortality."

7/18 and 19. Little Neck Bay and Alley Creek. Menhaden.
7/20 Eastchester Bay, Western Sound. Menhaden.
7/22. Hempstead Harbor. Menhaden.
7/23. Sound, off Westchester County. Winter and Summer Flounder, Lobster, Menhaden, Snapper, Bluefish.
7/23. City Island -- Westchester waters 50 to 60 feet deep. 400 to 500 dead lobsters captured; only 20 living keepers, tautog and eels also dead.
7/27. Hempstead Harbor. Summer, Winter and Windowpane Flounder, Lobster, Crabs, Eels, Killifish.
7/28. Western Sound. Menhaden.
7/29. Manhasset Bay. Winter Flounder, Rock Crabs, Windowpane Flounder.
7/29. Long Island Sound off Sands Point. Over 500 lb. dead; also many fish dead.
7/29. New Rochelle. 63 of 65 lobsters dead.
7/30. Sound near Eaton's Neck. Menhaden.
7/30. Manhasset and Little Neck Bays. Menhaden.
7/31. Sound, near City Island. Menhaden, Rock Crabs, Winter Flounder.
7/31. Near LILCO platform off Northport in waters 70 feet deep. Some lobsters, many crabs dead in pots.

That's only July (the fish kills went on into early August) and, because it was compiled by the New York State DEC, it includes only New York -- the same kinds of things were happening in Connecticut harbors as well. Twenty years ago today, and yesterday and tomorrow.

Baltimore, Where the Fish Are Dying

Here's a bad start to the summer, down on Chesapeake Bay: dead fish, algal blooms, and no dissolved oxygen in Baltimore's inner harbor. From the Baltimore Sun.