Population Level Impacts of Cooling Water Withdrawals on Harvested Fish Stocks

Abstract

Trillions of gallons are withdrawn every year from U.S. rivers, estuaries, lakes, and coastal waters to cool the turbines of power plants and other equipment in manufacturing facilities. In the process, large numbers of aquatic organisms die from entrainment into the plant or impingement against the outer portion of the intake structure. In this paper, we develop a generalized age-structured population model with density dependent survival of sub-adult age classes, and we use the model to perform a screening analysis of the effects of entrainment and impingement for 15 harvested fish stocks off the California and Atlantic coasts. Stock sizes are estimated to be depressed by entrainment and impingement by less than 1% in 10 of the 15 cases considered, between 1 and 3% in two cases, and between 20 and 80% in three cases. A variety of sensitivity analyses are conducted to evaluate the influence of several sources of model and parameter uncertainties.

Potential Environmental Impacts of Coastal Desalination Intake Structures: Urgent Data Gaps and Policy Needs

“…The relative percent change in striped bass stock sizes were quite severe and included a 30.0% reduction in the California population and a 22.9% decrease in the Atlantic population. These estimates are supported by the results of other studies examining the impacts of IE&E on Hudson River striped bass stocks. ,,, Effects on Atlantic croaker stocks were predicted to be even more severe, with results suggesting that IE&E may reduce adult stocks by 79.4%, potentially driving the population to the brink of collapse . Based on these findings, it is reasonable to suggest the increasing popularity of coastal desalination facilities may pose a meaningful risk to certain economically valuable species that complete development in estuarine habitats. , …”

“…Newbold and Iovanna modeled the relative percent change in adult stock sizes for 15 commercially or recreationally harvested marine species in the USA that are considered vulnerable to IE&E in estuarine cooling water intakes. For the majority of species included in the analysis, impacts on stock sizes were ≤3%, with striped bass ( Morone saxatilis) and Atlantic croaker (Micropogonias undulatus) as notable exceptions.…”

Laboratory Experiments on the Effects of Blade Strike from Hydrokinetic Energy Technologies on Larval and Juvenile Freshwater Fishes

“…The issue of population-level effects arising from mortality of early life stages has been discussed for many years in association with cooling system entrainment into steam-electric power plants. A variety of predictive models have been developed to help put the losses into perspective, e.g., by expressing the early life stages losses in terms of equivalent adults (Dixon et al 2003) or a reduction of the size of harvested fish stocks (Newbold and Iovanna 2007).…”

Pre-Screen Loss and Fish Facility Efficiency for Delta Smelt at the South Deltas State Water Project, California

“…On a global scale, large numbers of fish are directly lost to water diversions from rivers, lakes, estuaries and coasts by either becoming entrained into water diversion intakes or impinged on intake screens. The sources for such losses are ubiquitous and diverse, including diversions for agriculture (Nobriga and others 2004;Post and others 2006;Baumgartner and others 2009), power plants (Marcy 1975;Michaud and Taft 2000;Newbold and Iovanna 2007) and urban and other uses (Drinkwater and Frank 1994;Arthur and others 1996;Fitzhugh and Richter 2004).…”