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Quantifying Restoration Offsets at a Nuclear Power Plant in Canada.

Lawrence W Barnthouse¹, Cherie-Lee Fietsch², David Snider²

¹LWB Environmental Services, Inc., 1620 New London Rd., Hamilton, OH, 45013, USA. barnthouse@lwb-env.com.

Environmental Management

|October 21, 2019

Summary

To meet Fisheries Act requirements, a new metric quantifies fish losses from power plant water intakes. This method helps estimate habitat restoration needed for offsetting ecological impacts, ensuring compliance and effective compensation.

Keywords:

Canadian Fisheries Act Entrainment Equivalent adult model Habitat productivity index Impingement

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Area of Science:

Fisheries management
Environmental impact assessment
Habitat restoration ecology

Background:

Canadian Fisheries Act mandates avoidance, mitigation, and offsetting of fish losses for water takers.
Power plant operators must conduct habitat restoration to compensate for fish impingement and entrainment at cooling water intakes.
Quantifying compensation is challenging due to diverse fish species/life stages lost versus feasible restoration outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a metric for quantifying offsets for fish losses due to impingement and entrainment.
To demonstrate the application of this metric using data from the Bruce Generating Stations.
To estimate the offset value of a proposed dam removal on the Saugeen River.

Main Methods:

Development of a quantitative metric to express fish losses and habitat gains in comparable units.
Application of the metric to assess impingement and entrainment at the Bruce Generating Stations.
Utilizing the metric to estimate the ecological compensation provided by removing a Saugeen River dam.

Main Results:

A method has been established for quantifying offsets required for power plant-related fish losses.
The developed metric allows for the estimation of compensation needed for impingement and entrainment.
The method is being applied to evaluate the ecological benefits of dam removal as a restoration strategy.

Conclusions:

The developed metric provides a standardized approach to quantifying fish loss offsets under the Fisheries Act.
This quantitative method facilitates ecologically sound compensation for power plant impacts.
Dam removal on the Saugeen River is being assessed as a viable restoration project to offset fish losses.