WILLIAMSPORT – The Department of Environmental Protection today announced that it has renewed the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit for RRI Energy Mid-Atlantic Power Holdings LLC’s Shawville Power Plant in Bradford Township, Clearfield County.
For the first time, the permit establishes thermal limits on RRI Energy’s discharge of 426 million gallons per day of non-contact cooling water to the West Branch Susquehanna River and includes a compliance schedule for meeting those limits.
“DEP received several dozen comments during the past year from environmental and conservation organizations, as well as individuals, requesting that thermal limits be placed on RRI Energy’s non-contact cooling water discharge because it threatened the health of aquatic life in the West Branch Susquehanna River,” said DEP North-central Regional Director Nels Taber.
DEP determined that thermal limits were necessary based on in-stream water quality criteria in Pennsylvania’s Water Quality Standards (Chapter 93) regulations.
The discharge permit, which is valid for five years, establishes daily maximum thermal limits that vary by month or twice monthly. The limits range from a low of 8,279 million British thermal units per day in December to 35,186 million Btu per day during the last two weeks of May.
A British thermal unit is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit.
The compliance schedule included in the permit requires RRI Energy to submit its selected alternative for meeting the thermal limits to DEP in two months. The company’s discharge may not exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit at any point of the river accessible to the general public by June 1, 2011, and may not change the temperature of the river by more than two degrees Fahrenheit in any one-hour period within three years of the permit’s issuance. The specific monthly thermal limits in the permit must be met within three years.
The NPDES permit establishes effluent limitations for other parameters such as dissolved metals, pH and total suspended solids. It also includes monitoring, record-keeping and reporting requirements for six additional discharge points, and five internal monitoring points at the Shawville Power Plant.
RRI Energy is based in Canonsburg, Washington County.
