fishing near power plants - good idea?

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SkinnyJoe

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A friend from work recommended fishing near the Cumberland City, TN power plant, i.e. a dam nearby. I thought hydroelectric power and power generated from burning coal are two separate things, but I will leave that to the historians. In any case, the area is in the picture below, and that smoke doesn't seem too healthy to be around. A legitimate concern? Thanks.

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I have fished near one or two and found the fishing to be just fine. There was just something about the idea of eating a fish taken near a NPP so I threw them back. I'm sure they are probably fine.
 
On the Ohio River near where I live there's a lot of coal burning power plants and they use the water to make steam that turns the turbines.
Where it discharges back into the river it's a lot warmer and fish tend to congregate there in cooler months and there's some good action to be had. I don't eat fish from the big river, but we have caught all sorts of different fish around the discharge outlet. We give them to people that don't mind eating them, or in the case of sport fish release them.
The stacks are designed to shoot the burnt gases and smoke upwards and away from the area.
It probably won't do you anymore harm from fishing around a coal burning power plant a few hours, than just living in the eastern USA where there's a high concentration of pollutants anyway from all the plants and factories overall.
 
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San Onofre Nuclear Power plant in So. Cal has an outlet off shore. Fish congregate there due to the warm water. It is good place to catch fish, and then release. I would not eat them.
 
That's most likely not smoke but steam. Notice how quickly it is dissipating in your picture?
There are so many EPA regs on what can go into the atmosphere that they have ways of eliminating prety much all of the bad stuff. The cooling units however produce a lot of steam.

If I'm wrong someone please correct me.

Just as a side note I did a lot of fishing around in Fl. and some around the power plant where trout liked to go in the winter and due to the extra warm water they tended to have a lot of parasitic worms. I generally didn't eat those.
 
A lot of the white color is the heat, but in the warmer weather you can see the brown hanging over the sky from coal burning plants. They get more of the solids out all the time, but due to the volume burned there's always some left.
I know a little about coal fired power plants my mom works maintenance at one and she's been there 20 years. In fact she's working tonight making double time.
I doubt the fish near a plants discharge outlet are unhealthy to eat because of the water. It's not really contaminated at all from that. It just is heated in a boiler and the steam drives the turbines to generate electricity. The rivers the plants are located on tend to be the larger ones and the fish do have more contaminates in them from the chemical plants and other sources.
 
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Tha's not really smoke, it's steam. Perfectly safe. And most fish, at least in my neck of the woods, prefer the warmer water found near the outlets...
 
TLR said:
There are so many EPA regs on what can go into the atmosphere that they have ways of eliminating prety much all of the bad stuff.
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This isn't the place or the time for a discussion of this, so I'll just say there are a lot of loopholes and routinely lax enforcement.



Personally I would not eat the fish from near a coal power plant, though I don't think fishing there (or hiking, etc.) would do you much damage that (like Jill said) living in the area wouldn't.

Mainly I'd be concerned about mercury. I would hope that your local fish and game has checked the water and doled out warnings for appropriate consumption, but polluters sometimes strong-arm fish and game depts, especially with private waters.

If it's a really precious spot for you, you could probably arrange to deliver some samples to a local university and have them test both the water and the fish for a reasonable fee. I would think with the fish you would just cut a small piece of the meat off the shoulder for testing. I would suggest separately testing a piece of the skin, because fish accumulate toxins in the fatty layers there.
 
Don't know about the safety but the warm water outlets sure do lure fish to congregate around them.

So if your more into catching than eating I would give it a go and but keep an eye out to see if any of the air based discharges cause you any breathing difficulties.
 
Thanks for the advice. :thumbup:

My concern is not really the fish, as I release everything no matter where I fish. Besides, fish willl also have PCBs, dioxin and whatnot in their fatty tissues, stuff that came from elsewhere rather than the plant.

My main concern was the air quality, given that I would be so close to the source, and that burning coal generates fine particles, lead, mercury, and who knows what else. I remember for instance going through Louisville, KY and that the sky looked nightmarish around noon. I would definitely not want to live in one of those houses in the pic, especially with kids. It is known that kids in the Ohio valley have higher asthma rates for example.

I think I will visit the place, as exposure is obviously linked to duration. Thanks. :)
 
Most rivers have a lot worse things in them than anything that the power plants put in them.Like others have mentioned,that is steam that only warms the water a little but even the smoke from most of the coal fired plants goes through scrubbers that are suppose to clean it some before being released into the atmosphere.I'd be more worried about what kind of damage the municipalities and large plants are doing to the rivers but I don't think it's near as bad as it was 20 or 30 years ago.I know the Susquehanna looks a lot better know than it did when I was a kid.
 
Louisville Ky., has a smog problem more from the number of vehicles than power plants.
In fact they locate the power plants out of the county, at least the newer built ones are.
 
White stuff coming out of stacks is usually water vapor from scrubbers, the nasty water drains or is pumped to settling pits and such.

Colored stuff coming out of stacks is usually polution, though some treatments seem to color.

Warm water discharge is usually from condensers, cooling systems in general, and evaporators (for making pure water - rare in this day of reverse osmosis fiters).

Nothing wrong in eating fish from near powerplants if one would eat the fish from the water at any other place. The water from powerplants can be cleaner than the supplying source water.
 
SkinnyJoe said:
Thanks for the advice. :thumbup:

My concern is not really the fish, as I release everything no matter where I fish. Besides, fish willl also have PCBs, dioxin and whatnot in their fatty tissues, stuff that came from elsewhere rather than the plant.

My main concern was the air quality, given that I would be so close to the source, and that burning coal generates fine particles, lead, mercury, and who knows what else. I remember for instance going through Louisville, KY and that the sky looked nightmarish around noon. I would definitely not want to live in one of those houses in the pic, especially with kids. It is known that kids in the Ohio valley have higher asthma rates for example.
I think I will visit the place, as exposure is obviously linked to duration. Thanks. :)
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Yep I'm one of those kids!!!
 
I would rather eat fish from the area around a Nuclear Power than a coal plant. There is a lot lower level of contaminants from Nuclear Power production than at Coal Power Plants. Coal Plants actually give off higher levels of radionuclides in the fly ash than a typical Nuke gives off into the surrounding area.

That being said I would not eat fish out of the Ohio River if I could help it. I have eaten fish and shellfish taken from the vicinity of several Nuclear Plants on the oceans.
 
I've been fishing a powerplant discharge for over 20 years.
Really extends the season :)

Haven't eaten one yet.
 
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