The Intake: How Atlas-SSI Helped Con Edison Find an Ideal 316(b) Solution

Passing a regulation is one thing. Complying with it is another.

Con Edison had a big-time project on its hands when New York passed regulations that later were matched by the Aquatic Habitat Protection in Section 316(b) of the federal Clean Water Act.

So, the company turned to Atlas-SSI for screens that would keep fish – and future fish – safer from harm while the plants continued operating.

There was just one problem. They’d have to pull it off with a facility located on the other side of the river from the intake system and do it across an enormous expanse.

“Because of 316b and having to flume the fish and larvae back out to the river safely, you needed a lot of additional spray wash water,” said Rodney Brown, Regional Sales Manager for Atlas-SSI. “So, there had to be bigger pumps, a new piping system and some new relief valves and, of course, a whole new set of controls was required to be able to operate it remotely out there.”

The new system required from 10-12 times as much water to pump everything effectively, said Gary Thorn, the Manager of Steam Plant Projects at Con Edison. He was confident Atlas-SSI could do the job after a site visit – one that went much better than another he experienced when he was putting together the bid list.

“They gave us a GPS coordinate of their facility and we ended up in a junkyard. I always tell people I would’ve been better off if I’d stayed in the junkyard than what I eventually saw when I got to their facility,” he said. “Those site visits to see the vendor and see their capabilities were really important for us to get that gut feel that we had somebody we could work with that had the capability to accomplish something we needed to accomplish.”

That’s exactly what Atlas-SSI’s screens did, even coping with some difficult scenarios during and immediately after Hurricane Sandy.

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