The view from the parking lot at Big Bend Power Station, a 1,500-acre plant built in the 1960s to turn coal into electricity just south of Tampa, includes an unexpected sight. Bordering the parking lot are dozens of solar panels, set against a skyline dominated by three smokestacks whose vapor curls across the blue. The panels are little more than a wink—solar is a small fraction of the energy mix at Big Bend—but they suggest, at least, a hoped-for future when the plant no longer relies on coal.
The temperature the day of my visit was 53F—brisk, but perfect for the unusual sight I was actually there to see. Stanley Kroh, manager of land and stewardship programs for Big Bend’s operator, Tampa Electric Co., greeted me near an empty picnic grove. We headed inside the free exhibit, walking past a line of visitors waiting to pose beside a bronze manatee with a gummy smile. Speakers blared “Welcome to the Manatee Viewing Center, where nature meets technology!” on loop.
“We’ve had people that will say, ‘Isn’t it terrible that they put a power plant right next to this manatee sanctuary?’ ” Kroh said. “They get it completely backwards.” We traversed a cement walkway beneath a mangrove canopy—the plant was built on coastal land dredged of pristine mangrove swamps—until we reached a narrow pier jutting into a canal the width of a football field. Across the waterway were massive piles of coal. Conveyor belts zigged up from them, transporting lumps to the plant’s four generation units, which are also fueled by natural gas and are cooled by water sucked in from Tampa Bay.
Also before us, lurking beneath waters turned turbid by leaf tannins and warmed by the nonstop flow of hot water from the plant, were manatees—a hundred or more, by Kroh’s estimate. They remained shadowy blobs until the moment they emerged for air, their noses flaring lightly before spraying water and emitting an abrupt pfff. Then they’d rotate to reveal their ungainly bodies, looking like hippopotamus-walrus hybrids gorged to bursting with bread.
Manatees are the chubby vegan hippies of the sea. Neither predator nor prey, the world’s three remaining species are all considered vulnerable, including the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), of which the Florida manatee is a subspecies. Manatees seem to have evolved almost immune to Darwinian struggle. They’re small-brained, radically farsighted, almost deaf, and barely able to smell—effectively floating digestion machines propelled by paddle-like tails. They survive mostly on seagrass, 100 to 200 pounds of which is working through a manatee’s intestinal system at a given moment. Their lungs stretch the entire length of their trunk, helping them maintain optimal buoyancy so they can munch like Jersey cows grazing a field of clover. Yet though manatees are sitting targets, even sharks leave them alone, uninterested in an animal that, despite its corpulence, lacks a tasty, insulating layer of blubber. So unflappable are manatees that a wild one will roll over and let its only true predator—us—rub its tender underside.
Although manatees were hunted to near extinction for their meat and hides in the 19th century, a remnant ended up in the Florida Everglades, where they “have survived their persecution best,” as one biologist put it. Conservation efforts have included an 1893 statewide hunting ban and the animal’s addition to the endangered species list in 1967, but their resurgence in Florida may owe more to an unusual habitat network: 10 for-profit power plants. As manatees’ preferred habitat, natural warm-water springs, was being destroyed to create more space for humans, they began wintering in heated coal- and oil-fired plant runoff. Of the 7,500 to 10,300 manatees estimated to live in Florida, roughly half depend on these discharges.
This was what Kroh meant when he said visitors have it backward. The plant wasn’t built near the sanctuary; the manatees came there, traveling more than 100 miles north of their historic range to Tampa Bay, then down the almost mile-long canal to huddle in the steady rush of hot water flowing out of the plant. TECO Energy Inc., the parent of Tampa Electric, is one of two major utilities that have turned this unlikely dependence into a tenuous symbiotic relationship, opening manatee viewing centers and putting a friendly, eco-conscious face on an industry that’s one of the state’s top polluters. The utilities have helped make the manatee a beloved symbol of Florida—its official marine mammal and a major tourist attraction.
In recent years, though, a potentially tragic situation has emerged: As the plants, all of which are at least a half-century old, reach the point of requiring major upgrades, they’re being converted away from coal and toward natural gas and to a lesser extent renewables, fuels that don’t require the same volume of water for cooling as coal and oil. This outcome, highly desirable for cutting plant costs and greenhouse gas emissions, could have the unintended consequence of stranding thousands of manatees. Four of the 10 plants the animals have historically relied on are already closed. Within the next few years, Big Bend will retire one of its four coal-fired units and convert another to a gas-fired combined-cycle operation. The two remaining coal-fired units discharging warm water into the canal are getting old, with one only two years away from the average retirement age of U.S. coal units and the other 11 years away. The last of the 10 plants is likely to close in the next three decades or so. (Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and the founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies, introduced Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at moving the U.S. toward a 100% clean energy economy, including closing the remaining coal-powered plants in the U.S.)
Scientists don’t yet know if manatees can be weaned from artificial discharges in time, let alone how much it might cost. Decades of good public relations for the industry haven’t led to a workable plan. During temporary shutdowns some plants have tried artificial heaters, at a cost of millions of dollars, but this isn’t a long-term solution, and it won’t work at Big Bend, whose canal is the largest in the state. “It would be just about impossible to do here because of the volume of water,” Kroh said. “I can’t imagine how many heaters it would take to heat just a portion of this canal at the right temperature.”
And even if the manatees could be diverted from the plants, there might be nowhere left for them to go.
by Mya Frazier, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: National Geographic
The temperature the day of my visit was 53F—brisk, but perfect for the unusual sight I was actually there to see. Stanley Kroh, manager of land and stewardship programs for Big Bend’s operator, Tampa Electric Co., greeted me near an empty picnic grove. We headed inside the free exhibit, walking past a line of visitors waiting to pose beside a bronze manatee with a gummy smile. Speakers blared “Welcome to the Manatee Viewing Center, where nature meets technology!” on loop.
“We’ve had people that will say, ‘Isn’t it terrible that they put a power plant right next to this manatee sanctuary?’ ” Kroh said. “They get it completely backwards.” We traversed a cement walkway beneath a mangrove canopy—the plant was built on coastal land dredged of pristine mangrove swamps—until we reached a narrow pier jutting into a canal the width of a football field. Across the waterway were massive piles of coal. Conveyor belts zigged up from them, transporting lumps to the plant’s four generation units, which are also fueled by natural gas and are cooled by water sucked in from Tampa Bay.Also before us, lurking beneath waters turned turbid by leaf tannins and warmed by the nonstop flow of hot water from the plant, were manatees—a hundred or more, by Kroh’s estimate. They remained shadowy blobs until the moment they emerged for air, their noses flaring lightly before spraying water and emitting an abrupt pfff. Then they’d rotate to reveal their ungainly bodies, looking like hippopotamus-walrus hybrids gorged to bursting with bread.
Manatees are the chubby vegan hippies of the sea. Neither predator nor prey, the world’s three remaining species are all considered vulnerable, including the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), of which the Florida manatee is a subspecies. Manatees seem to have evolved almost immune to Darwinian struggle. They’re small-brained, radically farsighted, almost deaf, and barely able to smell—effectively floating digestion machines propelled by paddle-like tails. They survive mostly on seagrass, 100 to 200 pounds of which is working through a manatee’s intestinal system at a given moment. Their lungs stretch the entire length of their trunk, helping them maintain optimal buoyancy so they can munch like Jersey cows grazing a field of clover. Yet though manatees are sitting targets, even sharks leave them alone, uninterested in an animal that, despite its corpulence, lacks a tasty, insulating layer of blubber. So unflappable are manatees that a wild one will roll over and let its only true predator—us—rub its tender underside.
Although manatees were hunted to near extinction for their meat and hides in the 19th century, a remnant ended up in the Florida Everglades, where they “have survived their persecution best,” as one biologist put it. Conservation efforts have included an 1893 statewide hunting ban and the animal’s addition to the endangered species list in 1967, but their resurgence in Florida may owe more to an unusual habitat network: 10 for-profit power plants. As manatees’ preferred habitat, natural warm-water springs, was being destroyed to create more space for humans, they began wintering in heated coal- and oil-fired plant runoff. Of the 7,500 to 10,300 manatees estimated to live in Florida, roughly half depend on these discharges.
This was what Kroh meant when he said visitors have it backward. The plant wasn’t built near the sanctuary; the manatees came there, traveling more than 100 miles north of their historic range to Tampa Bay, then down the almost mile-long canal to huddle in the steady rush of hot water flowing out of the plant. TECO Energy Inc., the parent of Tampa Electric, is one of two major utilities that have turned this unlikely dependence into a tenuous symbiotic relationship, opening manatee viewing centers and putting a friendly, eco-conscious face on an industry that’s one of the state’s top polluters. The utilities have helped make the manatee a beloved symbol of Florida—its official marine mammal and a major tourist attraction.
In recent years, though, a potentially tragic situation has emerged: As the plants, all of which are at least a half-century old, reach the point of requiring major upgrades, they’re being converted away from coal and toward natural gas and to a lesser extent renewables, fuels that don’t require the same volume of water for cooling as coal and oil. This outcome, highly desirable for cutting plant costs and greenhouse gas emissions, could have the unintended consequence of stranding thousands of manatees. Four of the 10 plants the animals have historically relied on are already closed. Within the next few years, Big Bend will retire one of its four coal-fired units and convert another to a gas-fired combined-cycle operation. The two remaining coal-fired units discharging warm water into the canal are getting old, with one only two years away from the average retirement age of U.S. coal units and the other 11 years away. The last of the 10 plants is likely to close in the next three decades or so. (Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and the founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies, introduced Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at moving the U.S. toward a 100% clean energy economy, including closing the remaining coal-powered plants in the U.S.)
Scientists don’t yet know if manatees can be weaned from artificial discharges in time, let alone how much it might cost. Decades of good public relations for the industry haven’t led to a workable plan. During temporary shutdowns some plants have tried artificial heaters, at a cost of millions of dollars, but this isn’t a long-term solution, and it won’t work at Big Bend, whose canal is the largest in the state. “It would be just about impossible to do here because of the volume of water,” Kroh said. “I can’t imagine how many heaters it would take to heat just a portion of this canal at the right temperature.”
And even if the manatees could be diverted from the plants, there might be nowhere left for them to go.
by Mya Frazier, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: National Geographic
