A Comment on the Paper by John r. M. Kelso and Gary s. Milburn: “Entrainment and Impingement of Fish by Power Plants in the Great Lakes Which Use the Once-Through Cooling Process” (J. Great Lakes Res. 5:182-194, 1979)

Abstract

Assessment of entrainment and impingement impact of the 89 steam-electric generating stations on Great Lakes fish stocks reported by Kelso and Milburn (1979) is evaluated. Despite the large number of fish impinged at these stations, impingement losses typically constituted less than 1% of the standing stocks of fish in the lakes. Similarly, entrainment losses also represented a small fraction of total larvae in the lakes. Therefore, power plants alone probably have minimal impact on the Great Lakes sport and commercial fisheries and no detectable impact on fish populations. Despite Kelso and Milburn's assertion to the contrary, future fish losses from proposed generating capacity expansion may be less, due to improvements in cooling water intake design.