Oyster Creek Power Plant

Here we go again! Another fish kill at the power plant. I picked up the newspaper today and the headline read, “Hundreds of fish perish in plant shutdown.” Not surprising, every year when the weather gets cold and the power plant has a problem and shuts down there is a fish kill and there is an article in the paper. They talk of the hundreds or thousands of fish that are killed when the discharge of warm water stops and the surrounding water temperature drops. These fish are visible as they float out into Barnegat Bay.

What doesn’t get into the headlines is the millions if not billions of small fish, shrimp, fry, eggs and larvae that are killed every day of the year when the cooling tower is running. Yes, 24/7, 365 days a year these small fish are sucked into the intake of the giant cooling tower that keeps the reactor cool.

As conversationalists and environmentalists, the JCAA has been calling for a closed-cycle cooling tower for the power plant for years. Now is the perfect time to insist that a cooling tower be installed. This requirement is a MUST HAVE if the Oyster Creek power plant is to be re-licensed to run another 20 years.

Just think how much better the fishing in Barnegat Bay would be if these 24/7, 365 days a year fish kills had not been going on for the past 37 years. How many more fluke would there be? How many more weakfish would there be? How many more winter flounder? Not to mention the forage fish and shrimp that these fish feed on. Maybe, just maybe we would not be in a crisis situation with fluke if something had been done years ago. If the JCAA had been successful in having a closed-cycle cooling tower mandated for the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, how much better would the fish situation be in Delaware Bay? Multiply Oyster Creek by all the power plants up and down the coast and you can see that these power plants are having an enormous negative impact on the environment and the quantity of fish.

Ecosystem fisheries management is a requirement of the newly reauthorized Magnuson/Stevens Act. Now would be a good time for every angler to start insisting that everything possible be done to improve the chances of fisheries to grow and prosper. The JCAA has been working and will continue to work for a better environment so that every fishery will be improved. We can’t do it alone. We need your help and the help of all fishing and environmental groups.

What can you do? Write, fax, or call Lisa Jackson, Commissioner of the NJ DEP and insist that a cooling tower be mandatory for the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant as a requirement for re-licensing. Lisa’s contact information is:

Office of the Commissioner
401 E. State St., 7th Floor, East Wing,
P.O. Box 402,Trenton, NJ 08625-0402,
phone: 609-292-2885, fax: 609-292-7695

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