Protecting the Great Lakes: DNR Lawsuit

Clean Wisconsin files lawsuit against DNR to protect Lake Michigan

Katie Nekola

In August of this year, Clean Wisconsin filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court, challenging the Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Elimination Permit (WPDES) issued by DNR for the Elm Road Generating Station. The permit allows WE Energies to operate an open-cycle cooling system that would:

• Draw 3.2 billion gallons of water from Lake Michigan per day;
• Discharge and return the water 10-15 degrees warmer;
• Allow the water dumped back into the lake to be contaminated with illegal levels of mercury; and,
• Kill millions of fish in the process.

As you may recall, Clean Wisconsin contested the construction permit for the Elm Road Generating Station (ERGS) all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where we came within one justice’s vote of getting the permit thrown out. When the utility won its battle to build this enormous coal-fired power plant, many people thought the fight was over. However, we have always believed that the cooling system proposed for this plant is, by itself, such an environmentally damaging technology that we decided to continue to fight it. We filed a petition with the State Division of Hearings and Appeals, and worked with aquatic biologists to testify about the negative impacts this system would have. A week of hearings was held in Milwaukee last March. The judge in that case decided to let the utility keep the water discharge permit, even though DNR admitted that it had failed to require several important studies and reports that, by federal law, must be submitted beforea permit is issued, because the information that they contain is the basis for knowing whether a permit can legally be issued. Instead, DNR rushed to issue a permit for this system without doing any independent analysis, and without requiring the utility to do enough analysis that could justify giving their permission to kill millions of aquatic organisms.

Open-cycle cooling systems have been banned in Illinois and Indiana for thirty years because they are so damaging to aquatic life.  The Illinois attorney general has said "these systems, where they are still allowed to operate, have been shown to cause large-scale destruction of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans….the discharge of heated water…would disrupt the timing of egg hatching, causing nuisance species such as zebra mussels to flourish, and causing fatal temperature shock."  The system, which relies on a huge pipe extending two miles out into the lake, is not the only alternative available to cool this massive power plant. Indeed, although there are two other technologies that are readily available and commonly used to cool this type of plant, neither was evaluated when this system was approved. Instead, the utility was allowed to build this destructive system and told that it must merely conduct more studies to assess the damage after it has been operating for awhile---the regulatory equivalent of closing the barn door after the cows have long since wandered away.  Unfortunately, the Lake Michigan ecosystem would be far more difficult to replace than a herd of neglected cows. 

If you would like more information on how to protect Lake Michigan from ERGS, please call Katie Nekola at 251-7020 extension 14.