Environmentalists fault company Charles River said at risk By Carolyn Johnson, Globe Correspondent | September 11, 2004 A Cambridge power plant reduced its emissions last year when it switched from oil to natural gas. But environmentalists gathered yesterday to say that the plant simply traded one kind of pollution for another, now threatening the water instead of the air. The Mirant Kendall power station uses the water in the adjacent Charles River to cool its steam, which advocates say potentially endangers the health of the lower Charles River. "We support natural gas, but not at the cost of the river," Carol Lee Rawn, staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, said at a joint press conference with Clean Water Action and the Charles River Watershed Association, held at the foot of the Longfellow Bridge in Boston. Shawn Konary, director of environmental safety and health for Mirant, dismissed environmental groups' concerns, saying the plant's upgrade did not change the amount of hot water it releases into the river. "We expanded the ability to make power, but we're doing it on a much more efficient basis. More power with 40 percent lower emissions and the same exact water intake permitted," he said. Environmentalists are using the permit renewal process to challenge the plant's right to release as much hot water into the river. A draft permit recently developed by the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency would allow the company to continue releasing as much as 70 million gallons of 105-degree water into the river on an average day, as long as half of the river stays safe for native and migrating fish. The new permit would leave the option open for the company to add significantly more hot water than it currently does, which is sparking environmentalists' concern. "The company will say they won't ever discharge that much. If that's true, then they don't need to have a permit at this level," Rawn said. The plant pumps water from the adjacent Broad Canal, circulates that water around its turbines to cool the steam, and then releases the water back into the river at the sea wall. The released water can be no more than 20 degrees warmer than the water in the canal. EPA spokesman Peyton Fleming said that the proposed permit is in keeping with the goal of creating a swimmable, fishable Charles River by 2005, and includes a number of new, positive features: temperature monitoring at various points around the river and net barriers to prevent fish from getting sucked into the plant. But those who oppose the permit painted a lurid picture of what could happen if the company began to discharge water at the maximum levels: a "death zone" in half the river, stretching from the Museum of Science to Community Boating. Dead fish might be seen bobbing on the surface, the herring that swim upriver each spring might stall in the lower basin, or spawning fish might follow warm streams of water in the river back to the source of the hot water, creating a fishy broth. The warmed water would also hold less oxygen, and blue-green algae could thrive. "It would be unsightly. It would generally degrade the natural biology of the river and create different odors and make it less appropriate for swimming," said John Crawford, a marine scientist at the Conservation Law Foundation. The EPA will consider public comment on the draft permit until the end of September and begin work on a final permit, which should be completed in the next few months. A public hearing and information session on the permit will be held Monday at 6:30 p.m. in the Agassiz (formerly Baldwin) School Auditorium, 28 Sacramento St., Cambridge. Carolyn Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. Read the Boston Globe Editorial from Tuesday, September 14 criticizing the permit Return to the CRWA Mirant Kendall Station information page |