Supreme Court: Power Plants Not Required to Use State-of-the-Art Water Cooling Process
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the EPA can balance business costs against environmental benefits when deciding whether to impose closed-cycle cooling requirements on power plants.
The case was originally brought before the Court last year by the Bush Administration, which had argued that business interests must be properly considered. Environmentalists opposed this idea, claiming that the Clean Water Act required the use of closed-cycle cooling technologies. The harm at issue stems from the process by which power plants take water from surrounding sources to cool the plant’s operations. Without closed-cycle cooling, very hot water can be released back into the environment, thereby doing harm to the surrounding aquatic life.
While the Court’s ruling will allow the EPA to take into account business interests, the Obama Administration will have leeway in how it crafts future rules.
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