Opinion ID: 365744
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Intake Location

Text: 20 Petitioners' final substantive challenge, to the Administrator's approval of the intake location and design, is not a model of clarity. The Administrator decided that moving the intake further offshore might further minimize the entrainment of some plankton, but only slightly, and that the costs would be wholly disproportionate to any environmental benefit. Remand Opinion at 49-50. Apparently petitioners read the cost figure considered by the Administrator, $20 million, as including the estimated costs of delay and reengineering as well as additional tunnelling. They suggest that the cost of delay is an improper consideration. The record is clear, however, that $20 million is the cost of the tunnelling alone. Petitioners, wisely, do not argue that the cost may not be considered, and no harm is done by noting that there would be other costs. The legislative history clearly makes cost an acceptable consideration in determining whether the intake design reflect(s) the best technology available. 6 21 Petitioners also assign error to the Administrator's approval of the one-foot-per-second intake velocity. They allege that the Administrator neglected information indicating juvenile fish would be less able to detect and avoid the intake. He plainly did not ignore that information. His decision acknowledges that some juvenile fish will be killed, Id. at 48, and, as we have already discussed, devotes some space to the special problems of juvenile rainbow smelt. Moreover, there is expert testimony that the intake velocity is unusually low and is the optimum intake velocity for the intake site.