LEW HANES: Is there anything else that you think about in terms of climate?

BILL MELTON: Opacity of the atmosphere is a factor because the environment is affected.  When that measurement gets too high, they have to cut back the generators to maintain a certain air quality leveLew Hanes:  There is just too much emission going out of the stack and there is concern about the amount of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide being released into the atmosphere.

Also, there are limits on the discharge cooling water temperature that can be returned to lakes and rivers.  I've run into that problem before, where the discharge temperature was higher than allowable so they had to cut back on generation.

A plant with this potential problem will take a discharge temperature reading every hour and send us the total amount of generation output that they are allowed for the next hour based on cooling water requirements. Of course, in the mornings when it's cooler there is no problem, but as the day goes along they start cutting back.  It has become more of a problem since the drought began.