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News Release RI Department of Environmental Management 235 Promenade Street, Providence, RI 02908 (401) 222-2771 TDD/(401) 222-4462
DEM, ATTORNEY GENERAL APPLAUD EPA APPEALS BOARD'S DECISION TO UPHOLD DISCHARGE PERMIT FOR BRAYTON POINT POWER PLANT PROVIDENCE -- Department of Environmental Management Director W. Michael Sullivan, Ph.D. and Attorney General Patrick Lynch are applauding the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Appeals Board's September 27 decision to uphold a stringent discharge permit for the Brayton Point Power Station. The operator of the Somerset, MA facility, Dominion Energy Brayton Point, LLC, mounted a lengthy legal challenge to the 2003 EPA permit which requires substantial reductions of the power plant's environmental impacts on Mount Hope Bay."It is now nearly four years since EPA and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection issued the final discharge permit for the Brayton Point Power Station, and about time that the facility moves forward to implement the permit requirements rather than continuing to challenge them," said Sullivan. "The health of Mount Hope Bay has been compromised for too long. We are confident that this permit will reduce impacts to Mount Hope Bay so that this important ecosystem, and the shared Rhode Island fishery that it supports, can begin to recover from the ill effects it has been experiencing over the past several decades." "The fact that a 95 percent reduction in Brayton Point Station's impacts to Mount Hope Bay can be achieved with technologies that have been around for decades, and are being used by existing facilities today, speaks volumes about the Stone Age power-generation and environmental-protection technologies used by Brayton Point," said Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch. "Even if it appeals this decision to the appellate court in Boston, Dominion Energy can no longer justify killing Mount Hope Bay to make its shareholders happy." The fair and balanced permit addresses important environmental concerns and recognizes the energy needs of southern New England. It limits Brayton Point Power Station's water withdrawals from Mount Hope Bay and heated discharges back into the bay. The plant currently withdraws up to one billion gallons of water a day from Mount Hope Bay and discharges it back into the bay at temperatures up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. For several years, DEM worked cooperatively with EPA and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to develop a new and more stringent permit for discharge from the Brayton Point power plant. The permit is important to Rhode Island because scientific data has documented that Brayton Point Station's thermal pollution discharge levels and water withdrawal rates in Mount Hope Bay have increased substantially during the past two decades, resulting in adverse impacts to the fish population in Mount Hope Bay. Almost a decade ago, DEM expressed grave concerns about the unprecedented decline in fish population and loss of species diversity in Mount Hope Bay. This was based on a DEM report establishing a strong and clear correlation between fisheries decline and the increased water withdrawal and heated water discharge associated with the conversion to open cycle cooling at the plant. The DEM report documented that impacts to populations of four different fish species in Mt. Hope Bay — winter flounder, tautog, bluefish, weakfish — were more significant that those in Narragansett Bay and nearby Rhode Island coastal waters. Further, DEM scientists have found that the Mt. Hope Bay winter flounder population has not shown evidence of recovery and is still well below levels observed in other areas. In contrast, the Department has found that intensive management efforts for winter flounder and tautog have brought about modest recoveries in other areas of Narragansett Bay. -30- |
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