Suffolk legislator wants study on warming of LI Sound

February 17, 2015 by WILL JAMES AND RICK BRAND / will.james@newsday.com,rick.brand@newsday.com

A Suffolk lawmaker wants to know whether a Connecticut nuclear plant is warming the Long Island Sound and changing its ecology by discharging billions of gallons of heated water a day.

Legis. Jay Schneiderman (I-Montauk) has asked the county to spend $112,000 on a three-month study by Stony Brook University scientists to examine the Millstone Power Station's impacts on the Sound and nearby Peconic Bay.

Millstone, New England's largest power plant, overlooks the Long Island Sound from Waterford, Connecticut, about 12 miles north of Plum Island. Its cooling system cycles 2 billion gallons of seawater through the plant daily, releasing it back into the Sound the same day about 20 degrees warmer than it went in.

The Sound's average temperature was 53.7 degrees in 2014, according to Kenneth Holt, a spokesman for the plant. Water near the plant has warmed an average of .074 degrees a year -- a total of about 2.9 degrees -- between 1976 and 2014, according to data collected by scientists at Millstone. Holt said that trend was "consistent with what we've seen throughout the region."

Schneiderman, a former science teacher, said the plant discharges the energy equivalent of "six atom bombs a day" into the water, which he fears could be accelerating the effects of global warming and the declines of cold-water creatures such as lobster and winter flounder. Some clams and oysters are also harvested from the Sound and Peconic Bay.

"These plants give off a tremendous amount of heat, and two-thirds of that heat is dumped into the Sound," he said.

Larry Swanson, associate dean of Stony Brook's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, said it's "fairly well documented already that we're beginning to get more southern species and sort of a decline in northern species" in the Sound, but Millstone's impacts are unclear. He said it "would require an awful lot of heat" to alter the temperature of the entire Sound.

Millstone's operators are seeking five-year renewal of a permit by Connecticut environmental regulators by a September deadline. The plant began operating in 1970.

Dominion, the Virginia company that has owned Millstone since 2001, has a team of scientists that monitors the plant's environmental effects on a daily basis and has found "negligible impacts" on eelgrass, lobster, winter flounder and other species, Holt said.

"Two billion gallons sounds like a lot of water, until you take the broader perspective of the Long Island Sound," he said. "There's a channel that runs close to the station. The maximum flow through that during a tidal cycle is about 200 billion gallons. Then you look at the total volume of the Long Island Sound, and that's 18 trillion gallons."

While the water leaves the plant warmed by about 20 degrees, the temperature difference drops to 2 degrees about 8,000 feet offshore, Holt said.Millstone scientists monitor a 19-square-mile area of the 3,100-square-mile Sound, he said. Schneiderman said a wider study is needed to examine the plant's impact over the entire Sound and the Peconic Bay, estuaries that he said have currents strong enough to move the heated water.

Schneiderman's proposal would be Suffolk's first significant expenditure to combat nuclear power since the county's $33.4 million, 15-year battle in the 1980s and '90s to keep the former Long Island Lighting Co. from operating its Shoreham plant.

Suffolk's water quality committee is expected to review the proposal Feb. 27. Justin Meyers, a spokesman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, said protecting the region's waters is a high priority but the administration has not yet reviewed the plan.

< back to article