Seemingly harmless marine organisms are wreaking havoc on the world's coastal water ways, rivers and inland lakes. CLEANUP CREWS ARE USED to thankless tasks. But when maintenance men at the Sao Paulo Electrical Co. (CESP) descended to the bowels of the huge Seigio Motta hydroelectric plant on the Parana River eailiei this year, they couldn't believe what they saw. Or smelled. Like some nightmare still life, rotting shellfish were everywhere And that was the good news. Limnopeina fortunei--better known as the golden mussel--is a tiny monster. Left untended, the fast-multiplying mussels would quickly clog the cooling tubes, causing die turbines to overheat and, conceivably, the plant to shut down. The Sergio Motta plant is one of the crown jewels of the regional power grid, which supplies electricity to six of 10 Sao Paulo residents. The only way to fight back is to drain the turbines and scrape off die mussels with water jets and pickaxes. "We hauled out trucks of the stuff," says engineering chiefLuis Tadeu de Freitas. "The stink was unbearable."
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