May 16th, 2008 Riverkeeper Report A New Attack Against Indian Point?
In response to a report issued today by Riverkeeper regarding fish populations in the Hudson River, Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and advisor to the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (New York AREA) issued the following statement:
“For many years, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the head of Riverkeeper, has touted the robust recovery of the Hudson River in glowing and proud terms. Today’s study delivers an entirely different message. Either it or Mr. Kennedy’s years of positive assessments about the Hudson must be wrong. They can’t have it both ways.
In fact, less than two years ago, Mr. Kennedy stated: ‘Today, the Hudson is the richest water body in the continental U.S. It has more fish per acre than any river in the country’ (Source: Nob Hill Gazette, June 2006: http://www.nobhillgazette.com/heroes.html).
It is clear that the chief aim of the Riverkeeper report is to wage a new attack against Indian Point in hopes of closing the plant, causing economic and environmental harm to the downstate region of New York. Throughout the United States and the world I see that nuclear power contributes to a cleaner and safer environment, as does Indian Point.
Riverkeeper’s data demonstrate no link between their claims and Indian Point. This indicates that this report is a politically motivated document as opposed to a report based on sound scientific evidence.
The Hudson River and downstate New York would have dirtier water and much more unhealthy air if Indian Point were replaced by fossil fuel sources, which are the only practical alternative if it is shut down, as found in a National Academy of Sciences study on the feasibility of closing Indian Point (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11666.”
In testimony to the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee in recognition of the 30th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act on October 8, 2002, Mr. Kennedy said, ‘The Hudson River has seen dramatic recovery since the 1960’s. Back then, the River was considered an open sewer. Today, it is the only large river in the North Atlantic that retains strong spawning stocks of its entire collection of historical migratory species.’” |
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Reader Response
John Sweeney
May 20th, 2008
An article from The Daily Green notes a recent study found that fully 25% of fish species worldwide, are invasive non-original species, and that all native species are now in decline. Read the article yourself at http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/invasive-fish-47020405 The decline is worldwide.
A similar article found at http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/2585
tells us how a National Audubon Society study found that fully 80% of common bird species in the USA have declined in numbers up to 54% since 1967. The report blames human development as the cause of this plummet in bird numbers. This decline is continent-wide.
These are global realities, now that human civilization has spread, supplanting archaic biosystems, with new diversified biosystems, adapted to the presence of humanity.
To attempt to jawbone this planetary fact, into a call for donations to Riverkeeper, is not only bad science, but skewed bio-ethics, diverting or preventing needed action, by injecting Riverkeeper's own needs into a much larger issue, one not solvable by Riverkeeper's narrow abilities.
In essence, it would be possible anywhere, on any river or lake, to fund a designer science study, finding some species were declining. To stop there, would be meretricious misuse of the methods of science, for narrow aims. In fact, older species are giving way to new species, diversifying native fauna, to a more global mix. If we were to leave out the broader picture, it could only be that we were hoping to advance a narrow pre-cooked agenda, at the expense of truth.
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Reader Response
John Sweeney
May 20th, 2008
According to the State University at Stony Brook, at URL
http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/fc.1.estuaries.html
The majority of water flow in the Hudson estuary is tidal, amounting to some 425,000 cubic feet per second at the battery. Fresh flow is much less, reaching a maximum of 30,000 cubic feet per second in April. The estuary flushes itself every 126 days. That is to say, after 126 days, all the water is new.
At its maximum, 425000 plus 30000 gives 455000 cubic feet per second total water flow, fresh plus tidal. 126 days contain 10,886,400 seconds. Therefore a rough calculation of the total mass of water in the estuary equals: (455000 cubic feet/second) X ( 10,886,400 seconds) = 49,533,122,000,000 cubic feet of water.
Indian Point's circulating Water Pumps are 140,000 GPM pumps. There are 12 pumps ( all 12 are seldom used at once). 140,000 GPM is 2333 gallons per second. (2333) X (12 pumps) = 28,000 gallons per second, or 3740 cubic feet per second intake water for both units running at ultra maximum capacity. If all 12 pumps are run for the entire 126 days needed to replace the estuary water, (one flush) they will process 40,715,136,000 cubic feet of that water.
(40,715,136,000) divided by ( 49,533,122,000,000) = 0.008
At its maximum capacity, Indian Point touches less than one percent of the Hudson estuary's water.
That means that 99% of the estuary's water mass never encounters Indian Point. To a fish, or an egg floating in the estuary that means more than 99% live their entire lives as if Indian Point did not exist.
To give up the 2000 megawatts powering New York's stock exchange, Metro North, Yankee Stadium, the Meadowlands, Madison Square Garden, every single shopping mall, and all the local airports to save 1% of the fish larvae may seem worthwhile to dedicated career ecologists, who want to see every egg miss Indian Point, but it may not be worthwhile to anyone else, not even to the fish.
Fish lay eggs in a vast overkill, to compensate for predation and bad luck. Fish eggs are in no way comparable to human babies. Fish eggs are more accurately compared to human spermatozoa, the vast majority of which are expected to die, and which do die off, in a very normal and natural reduction that leads to a stable and healthy population.
Moreover, Indian Point has a Fish Return System in place, which guides anything swimming in that 1% of the estuary's water at the intake, along an escape weir that returns fish to the
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Reader Response
John Sweeney
May 20th, 2008
Seeing as shad, a form of herring, and Riverkeeper's central species of concern , is anadromous, spending most of its life at sea, any blame for reduction in numbers has to be layed at the feet of the countries sending huge factory ship fleets out to decimate fish populations in mid ocean. Once satisfied with larger herring species, these fleets had put themselves in a bind by fishing those species to depletion. Now, just to continue their own profitability, they've turned to the shad (which they once ignored). Thus the shad are pursued, and depleted, by a vastly efficient high tech enemy, one who will fish them to extinction at some point.
Riverkeeper, not truly interested in the survival of shad, downplays this fact.
Meanwhile, in the Hudson estuary, everything has changed.
Invasive species, led by the Russian zebra mussel, have conquered the river, and usurped the places in the food chain formerly inhabited by declining species. Zebra mussels alone, are said by the Lamont Dohery laboratory, to filter the entire mass of water in the estuary once every 1.4 days.
This is a truly massive use of the Hudson's waters, dwarfing by several thousand times, the amount of water used by power plants for cooling. Moreover, it is a use of the water with absolutely no benefit for mankind, for other species, or for anything at all, except the increase of the monstrous zebra mussel plague, which so far has been unstoppable worldwide.
Were Riverkeeper truly an estuarine protector, it would put its weght behind the search for solutions for the zebra mussel.
However, its search for deep pocketed opponents, marks it clearly as a pure public relations political organization, overlawyered, thinking only of its own prosperity, and setting up its own peculiar straw men, so as to appear to be knocking them down, while asking the public for charity donations, that they might continue this campaign.
Actually, what Riverkeeper does best, is collect money, having recently filled its own corporate grants chair, to seek larger donations from larger donors. This is bad news for the shad, who will not get any help from this quarter, and will only be used as bait, to catch these larger, corporate fish.
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