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Updated: May 6, 2024 @ 1:02 am

Environment

The coal-fired Merrimack Station power plant in Bow is the subject of an environmental lawsuit.

New permit for Bow power plant does not require cooling towers, which EPA had required in 2011

The coal-fired Merrimack Station power plant in Bow is the subject of an environmental lawsuit.

The coal power plant in Bow will not have to install $112 million cooling towers, after the EPA removed the requirement from the plant’s new permit.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a new permit for the plant last week. The permit does not include a requirement for special equipment to cool down water before the plant sends it back to the river — though the EPA had called for that equipment in 2011.

An EPA spokesman said the requirement was removed because the plant does not run as often as it did in 2011, and because new kinds of screens can better protect fish than what was available in 2011.

The Merrimack Station plant uses hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the Merrimack River each day of operation. After the water has been used by the plant, the water flows into a canal, and eventually back to the river.

The plant’s new permit will allow Merrimack Station to continue this process until at least August 2025, when the new permit expires.

“This heated water, in turn, raises water temperatures in the river, which degrades the river’s aquatic habitat and harms its aquatic life,” the EPA said in a 2011 statement. The warmer water kills fish eggs and larva, the EPA said in 2011. The agency said the five-mile stretch of river near the Bow plant has warmer water and fewer fish than other parts of the river.

In 2011, the EPA said the Bow plant would have to cool down the water it dumps back into the Merrimack River, with cooling towers. Cooling towers were estimated to cost $112 million, and would have added just over a dollar to customers’ electric bills.

A spokesman for the then-owner of Merrimack Station said the company had no analysis that supported the need for a cooling tower, and said the plant had not harmed the Merrimack River. The plant was sold in 2018 to Granite Shore Power LLC, for $175 million.

EPA spokesman John Senn said the agency found cooling towers were no longer necessary to protect the river.

“The final permit does not rely on that technology because of significant operational changes at the facility, new scientific research, and new EPA regulations,” Senn wrote in an email. “As a result of these changes, EPA’s final permit regulates the power plant so that it can continue to generate needed electricity while also protecting the Merrimack River.”

Those “significant operational changes” are how rarely Merrimack Station is called on to generate power. It ran almost all the time in 2011, Senn said, but is now used only at times of peak demand, like the coldest days of winter and summer heat waves.

Senn said the new permit limits the temperature of the water Merrimack Station can dump into the river, but the plant does not need cooling towers.

“Merrimack Station operates very differently than it did in the past but remains a vital part of New Hampshire’s transition to the next generation of energy sources,” said Granite Shore Power CEO James Andrews in a statement. He said the new permit prioritized environmental protection, and would protect fish.

Climate change activists have protested around the plant, one of the last coal-burning power plants in New England, over its greenhouse gas emissions.

Rebecca Beaulieu of the New Hampshire chapter of climate change activist group 350 said she saw the EPA’s changed stance on cooling towers as part of the Trump administration’s effort to roll back environmental regulations.

“Anyone downstream of the river is going to be affected by this,” she said.

The warm water discharge is also the subject of a lawsuit environmental advocacy groups filed in August 2019. The lawsuit alleges the plant’s owners are violating the Clean Water Act by dumping too-warm water back into the river, a claim the plant has denied. The lawsuit is still moving forward.

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