by Guest
Writer & League Board Member-
Kathie Beinkafner
HUDSON CHAMPLAIN POWER
Express approved by NYPublic Service Commission
The Hudson Champlain Power Express (CHPE) project has been proposed by people and corporations not based in New York State. Hydro-Quebec generates power from waterfalls, so it is considered “clean and renewable.” The project involves laying an electrical transmission line down Lake Champlain, through the Champlain Canal and through the Hudson River, the Harlem River reaching a converter station in Astoria, a distance of 339 miles
from Canada to New York City.
The proponents of this project claim the following benefits:
1. Dependable, all season source of baseload, renewable, clean hydropower that will provide near term contribution toward phasing out existing fossil fuel burning power plants, currently producing 90% of New York City’s total
2. Affordable power that will lower electricity generation costs throughout the state by over $17 billion over the first 25 years of
3. $189 million in environmental and community benefits across New York
4. 37 million metric tons of carbon emissions reduction statewide over the first ten years of the project, the equivalent of taking over half a million cars off of New York’s
5. CHPE will contribute 28% to achieving New York City’s greenhouse gas reduction target by 2030, a decrease in harmful air pollutants equivalent to shuttering 15 of 16 peaker plants [those plants that fire up to supply electricity during peak use times].
6. $14 billion in tax revenue for communities throughout New York State over 25
Sounds too good to be true. Here are some other facts the project does not tell us about.
The power corporation wants tax breaks from the counties that the cable will run through.
The power line is to be laid in a 7-foot deep trench in the sediments of the lake, canal, and rivers. To excavate the trench and lay the cable, they will be disturbing sediments in the Hudson River. The most important environmental issue is that between 1947 and 1977, General Electric dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of p PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls] into the Hudson River. The source of the PCB discharges was two GE capacitor manufacturing plants located in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, New York, about 50 miles north of Albany. These oily chemicals have been entrained in sediments and never totally cleaned up.
If the power company tries to make this trench in the river sediments, it is very possible the PCBs could be released into the stream flow and make their way into public water supplies.
PCBs are a class of chemicals used in transformers, those big black tanks you see up on electrical poles along the road. The oily substance is toxic and used in electrical products. PCB chemicals were banned in the U.S. in 1979 because these chemicals harm human and environmental health. Studies of PCBs in humans have found increased rates of melanomas, liver cancer, gall bladder cancer, biliary tract cancer, gastrointestinal tract cancer, and brain cancer, and may be linked to breast cancer.
The important environmental impact that has, apparently, not be addressed by any SEQRA study is that PCBs have been transported downriver and entrained in river bottom sediments. There are seven communities in the Mid-Hudson region which get their drinking water from the Hudson River. These towns, villages and one city are joined as a group known as the Hudson 7, including Village and Town of Rhinebeck, City and Town of Poughkeepsie, and Towns of Hyde Park, Lloyd, and Esopus. The group is seeking cooperation with the project to test chemical contaminants in Mid-Hudson River sediments before the trench is dug as well as during and after disturbance of the sediments from the “jet plowing” of the trench. Both PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl] substances and PCB chemicals are considered “forever” chemicals because they do not degrade in the environment.
