The EPA’s cooling water rule resulted from a settlement following years of litigation with environmental groups including Riverkeeper Inc., Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club. Based on environmentalists’ reaction yesterday, the legal battles may not be over.

Reed Super, legal director for the Waterkeeper Alliance, said the EPA abdicated its responsibility “to state agencies that are simply not equipped to make these decisions alone.

“Unfortunately, EPA’s rule will perpetuate the unacceptable status quo that has allowed antiquated plants to withdraw nearly 100 trillion gallons of fresh and sea water each year, and indiscriminately kill fish and wildlife instead of recycling their cooling water or use dry cooling technology, as modern plants have done for the past three decades,” Super said. “We are beyond disappointed with this new rule.”

The energy industry’s initial review was more positive. “The Environmental Protection Agency, to its credit, has taken into account many viewpoints and made improvements to this rule based on the scientific data and procedural analysis that has been brought to its attention,” the Nuclear Energy Institute said in a statement. “We’re hopeful those improvements are included in the final rule.”

NEI said enforcement must recognize the impacts on electric reliability and include cost-benefit analyses to balance increases in electricity costs against environmental benefits.

“Cooling towers consume twice as much water from the aquatic habitats we want to protect compared to once-through cooling systems,” NEI continued “This fact is very important given projections that much of our country will face a water-constrained future. Technology-based solutions at a power plant’s cooling water intake structure can be highly effective in protecting fish and can accommodate the ecological diversity of the various sites. As the EPA has pointed out previously, solutions like traveling screens, with a collection and return system, are comparable to cooling towers in protecting aquatic life in water bodies used for cooling power plants.”

Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, said the association was “pleased that EPA had avoided imposing a categorical one-size-fits-all approach to compliance; has embraced significant elements of flexibility; and has acknowledged the importance of weighing costs with environmental protection.”