The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on Thursday issued a draft water pollution permit modification which will allow We Energies to operate the offshore cooling water intake built for the expansion of the Oak Creek power plant.

The intake, capable of pulling in about 2 billion gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan, has been under fire from environmentalists and other states because of its potential to destroy small aquatic creatures and change the local lake's water temperature and thus lake ecology.

The DNR has scheduled a public informational meeting so people can comment on the permit sections to be modified. It will be held on Monday, June 9, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Oak Creek Community Center, 8580 S. Howell Ave., Oak Creek.

To be challenged

"At that point, once all that's over, they'll make it a final permit. Which means once it's a final permit we can challenge it, and we will," said Katie Nekola, attorney for Clean Wisconsin, the environmental group which is leading the continued opposition to the plant.

"Right now we aren't even looking at that," said Brian Manthey, a spokesman for We Energies. The utility has continually met the standards set and been given the necessary state permits, he said.

The first of two new generating units is scheduled to enter service next year, and the offshore intake is required for those new units and to supply water to the four existing units. Hopefully the operational permit will be finalized by this summer, Manthey said. "From an environmental standpoint, it is the best method to be used for these units."

Intake uses

The once-through system will draw in water, send it through the power plants to cool equipment, and then return it to the lake. Opponents of this system say that it will kill too many fish and small organisms which will die either from being pulled against lake bottom screens or drawn through machinery, and that it will alter the local ecology when warmed water is pumped directly back into the lake.

Opponents say the utility should have built cooling towers. That's the best technology available, is sanctioned by the Clean Water Act and even the DNR has said that the offshore intake isn't the best technology, Nekola said.

In a paper about the permit, DNR officials wrote that the use of cooling towers would not be in accord with the goals of the Great Lakes Compact - the agreement which would govern how and by whom water could be withdrawn from the lakes for use. Towers would produce a permanent loss of 9.5 million gallons of water per day through evaporation, the officials wrote.

"The goals of the compact are just not water quantity in the Great Lakes. It's the protection of the Great Lakes," Nekola said. "They don't talk about the mercury which the coal plant itself will be putting into the Great Lakes."

DNR officials also wrote that information submitted by We Energies demonstrates that the offshore cooling intake would have less effect on aquatic creatures than cooling towers, that the use of cooling towers would cost an additional $635 million, and that the once-through system maximizes the efficiency of the plant.

The history

This permit came into question again because of a federal court decision last year saying that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had been too liberal in labeling power plants new or existing facilities. The distinction is crucial to utility budgets. Plants labeled as new are required to take many extra steps to control pollution; rules are looser for existing power plants that are deemed to be modified.

After the federal ruling, a state administrative law judge found that Oak Creek was a new facility, and he gave the DNR the option of modifying the plant's water pollution permit or starting the process to issue a completely new permit.