Water

Athens Generating utilizes water from the Hudson River in its steam generation process. This water is withdrawn from the river at the Athens Generating River Water Pump House located of the shore of the Hudson River. The design of the pump house and surrounding property was constructed to match the aesthetics of the surrounding area. The Pump House withdraws up to 180,000 gallons of water a day from the river, a small fraction of the 10.5 billion gallons of water that pass the Athens Generating Plant intake facility on a daily basis.

Athens Generating undertook an extensive study, the Icthyoplankton Entrainment Monitoring Program, to evaluate the entrainment rate (rate at which icthyoplankton are drawn into) the facility’s intake system would have on the Hudson River fishery. Of the samples taken in the 2004 and 2005 seasons very few icthyoplankton (larval fish) were found in the samples and in 2006 no icthyoplankton were found in the samples. The results of the program indicated that the siting and construction of the Athens Generating intake system were done in a manner that minimized the impact of aquatic organisms from entrainment and that no-long term impacts on the river’s fishery would occur. The positive results of the study are attributed to the exclusionary properties of the 2mm slot screen size of the intake pipe and the placement of the intake pipe in relatively deep water.