Judge: State
failed to stop pollution from FPL cooling canals Turkey Point
cooling canals dump 600,000 pounds of salt into aquifer daily. Salty water from
canals has migrated four miles toward county drinking water wellfields. State failed to
cite the utility despite “preponderance” of evidence. A
view of the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in Homestead with the cooling
canals in the foreground in 2011. ALLISON DIAZ FOR THE MIAMI HERALD By Jenny
Staletovich A Tallahassee
judge has ordered state environmental regulators and Florida Power & Light
to clean up the utility’s troubled cooling canals at Turkey Point after blaming
the system for polluting South Florida’s groundwater. In the sharpest
indictment yet of the aging canals, Administrative Law Judge Bram Canter found
that the canals had caused a massive underground saltwater plume to grow,
threatening to contaminate wellfields providing drinking water for the Florida
Keys and parts of Miami-Dade County. Florida regulators, the judge found, then
let the utility off the hook by failing to stop the pollution when the state’s
Department of Environmental Protection approved a faulty management planin the midst of the
Christmas holiday more than a year ago over the objections of nearby cities,
the county, environmentalists and rock miners. The [plan] lacks
the most fundamental element of an enforcement action: charges. Administrative
Law Judge Bram Canter The plan, Canter
wrote, “lacks the most fundamental element of an enforcement action: charges.” For the utility,
now collecting money from customers to build two more reactors at the plant,
the ruling comes as a stinging rebuke. For years, FPL denied the 40-year-old
canals had contributed to the saltwater plume that has migrated more than four
miles inland, far more than in other parts of the county. But two summers ago
when temperatures in the canals spiked, nearly forcing the shutdown of two
reactors, FPL was forced to reckon with what Canter described as a
“preponderance of … evidence.” FPL estimates
that the canals are now dumping 600,000 pounds of salty water daily into the
Biscayne aquifer. Despite that
evidence, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection told Canter the
state was unable to cite a specific violation. “To be honest,
the groundwater standards are a little clunky in these coastal areas,” Sarah
Doar, an attorney for the state agency, said at a November hearing. Critics say the
state has a far too cozy relationship with the utility it is charged with
regulating. “They’re using
the Biscayne aquifer and the bay as their toilet for their industrial waste
from their facility,” said Ed Swakon, a consulting engineer for rock miner
Altantic Civil, which sued FPL because the spreading plume is threatening to
shut down operations at one of the company’s most lucrative mines. “Finally,
somebody is holding FPL accountable,” he said. FPL officials
say they will continue to follow regulatory requirements and are making
progress in improving the canals. Since the summer of 2014 when hot canal water
nearly forced the utility to shut down its two reactors twice, temperatures
have dropped and salinity fallen from nearly three times levels in the nearby
bay to just above normal ocean levels. FPL has also returned to removing
vegetation in the canals after dumping herbicides to kill an algae bloom. Still, the
crisis calls into question the future of the canals and what to do with the
underground plume, which appears to be moving into the nearby bay, a federally
protected national park. “The question is
what do we do now,” said Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava. “We
have an existing system for the cooling canals that is antiquated and the
makeshift solutions are inadequate and risky.” 600,000 pounds The amount of
salt deposited daily by the cooling canals into the Biscayne aquifer When the canals
first began failing, FPL scrambled to obtain permission from nuclear regulators
to operate the canals at 104 degrees, the highest temperatures in the nation.
The utility also asked state water managers for emergency permission to pump
millions of gallons of fresh water into the system, a remedy that critics worry
may solve FPL’s woes but leave South Floridians scrambling for fresh water. The deepening
canal problem coincided with federal reviews ongoing for two additional
proposed reactors and in part caused nuclear regulators to take an ongoing
second look at potential environmental impacts. The high
temperatures in the cooling canals follow a $3 billion “up-rating” project by
FPL in 2013 to produce 15 percent more power from the existing reactors. FPL
has blamed a lack of rain and other factors for the temperature spike and the
administrative judge found there wasn’t yet enough evidence to blame the
uprating entirely for the canal problems. But state environmental protection
officials worried that the change might affect the cooling canals and included
a clause calling for a review if operating conditions changed. They did
dramatically and the summer crisisat Turkey Point led to the Dec. 23
management plan, which drew lawsuits not only from environmental groups, but
nearby cities, the county and rock miners, complaining that the state was doing
too little to protect water supplies. They also
complained that FPL has been allowed to continue operating the canals even
though its federal pollution permit expired by filing simply for extensions. “We’re not even
keeping the utility in compliance,” said Laura Reynolds, former director of
Tropical Audubon now working for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “To
me, that’s a loophole.” In October, the
county settled its lawsuitby striking a deal with FPL
that calls for cleaning up the canals with a complex fix that involves the
short-term use of bay water. For the longterm, the utility will consider using
reclaimed water from a nearby sewage treatment plant and drilling injection
wells that would catch and pump heavier saltwater deep into the Floridan
aquifer and into the boulder zone. Part of that
decree also included increased monitoring, which uncovered another potential
problem: cooling canal water that appears to have migrated into Biscayne Bay
and triggered higher levels of ammonia. The county is now investigating whether
the ammonia is linked to the canals and will present a report to county
commissioners in March. As part of the
decree, University of Miami hydrologist David Chin also took a look at FPL’s
clean-up plan to pump up to 100 million gallons of water a day from the nearby
L-31 canal. Chin found major problems. Because evaporation rates will likely
continue to outpace rainfall in the area, the salinity in the canals will
continue to rise, he said. Pumping more fresh water from the canals could lower
salinity, but also raise water levels in the canal, putting more pressure on
the underground salt plume and spreading it even further. Chin also took
issue with FPL’s explanation for the canal problems. FPL has said the
temperature increase stemmed from a festering algae bloom the utility said
spread after the cooling canals were temporarily shut down during the 2013
expansion. FPL said because one of the plant’s five units was retired, no
additional heat was going into the canals. But Chin, who looked at data from
2010 to 2014, disputed that and said more work was needed to determine the
relationship between the canals and the plant expansion. FPL spokesman
Greg Brostowicz said Chin’s findings were made without the utility’s input or
more recent data. “It would have
been a more complete report had we had the opportunity to provide input to Dr.
Chin’s review,” he said. Given the
state’s lax oversight, critics say it’s time for federal environmental
regulators to step in. DEP officials did not respond to a request for comment. “DEP should be
stripped of its responsibility because this isn’t the only case. All over the
state we’re seeing the degradation of the Clean Water Act, but this is a really
precise example,” Reynolds said. “Adding
freshwater into the system is not going to fix it,” she said. “You still are
operating a canal system that concentrates salt. You can’t get away from the
root problem.”
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