UNDERWATER POWER LINE PROPOSAL ADVANCES

Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News

08-21-10 - Columbia County and the remainder of the Hudson River Valley is once again on the drawing boards for high-powered transmission lines that would bring electricity to New York City.

The latest in a long list of proposals is a $1.9 billion plan to bring 1,000 megawatts of renewable wind and hydropower from Quebec to Westchester County, New York City and Bridgeport, Conn., through a transmission line that would run beneath the Hudson River.

Last week, the state Public Service Commission determined the company’s application for a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need to be complete. The determination means that the official formal review can begin, said James Denn, spokesman for the commission.

“Now we begin the official, formal process for this application,” Denn said, adding the next step is to allow active parties to review the filing and comment.

Nearly four-dozen agencies and organizations have secured stake-holder status in the review of the proposal, including Scenic Hudson Inc., Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation, National Grid, Natural Resources Defense Council and New York State Council of Trout Unlimited. While the city of Yonkers, the Town of Northumberland, and Saratoga County, all have secured stakeholder status, no local municipalities or counties sought such status.

“We are going to be participating in the environmental review,” said Jeff Anzevino, Director of Land Use Advocacy for Scenic Hudson. “We are interested in what the Department of Energy finds in the environmental impacts, what the need is, and the renewable benefits.”

Scenic Hudson officials said they see some benefits to the proposal.

“We see that there is a potential to bring some renewable energy to New York State and to get rid of some of the coal or nuclear sources we have,” said Scenic Hudson’s Hayley Mauskapf, an environmental advocacy associate.

However, she added, “a project of this type and magnitude is unprecedented in the Hudson Valley, so of course we have some concerns.”

Among those are the impact of the electromagnetic field, the installation process effects, the thermo effect and the impact of the re-suspension of PCBs in the river sediment, she said.

Named the “Champlain Hudson Power Express Inc.,” the 420-mile power transmission line would be buried along the bottom of the Hudson River from near Selkirk down the river into Yonkers and Manhattan. The company plans to run four 5-inch-diameter high-voltage direct current cables underwater or underground along the route from Canada to Manhattan and Bridgeport. Other underwater portions of the proposed route include Lake Champlain and the Champlain Canal.

The company proposes to have the project completed in 2015 and says the system would bypass transmission bottlenecks, providing metropolitan areas with growing energy demands access to new and renewable power that can’t be delivered through the current transmission system. The power to be supplied through the lines would come primarily from new hydropower and wind-generation projects currently being developed in Canada.