Power line proposed for under Lake Champlain
A Toronto-based company is seeking federal permits for a $3.8 billion Quebec-New York City transmission line that involves burying four, 5-inch cables in the bed of Lake Champlain.
Transmission Developers Inc. is part of The Blackstone Group, a private-equity investment firm in New York City. The Champlain-Hudson transmission line is TDI’s first project.
Jessome said his company looked at areas across North America with a need for expanded transmission and the delivery of more renewable energy.
“The New York/New England area is very constrained in regard to transmission, and it can be interconnected with some of the best hydro resources in North America,” he said.
Burying the 355-mile power line will minimize its impact on communities and eliminate the electromagnetic fields associated with overhead power lines, the company said.
The Champlain-Hudson Power Express project would carry up to 2,000 megawatts of renewable electricity, providing a major new conduit between energy-rich eastern Canada and energy-hungry southern New England and New York. “There would be some stir-up of sediment when the line is buried,” said Jeannine McCrumb, a regulatory policy analyst in the Agency of Natural Resources, but “as far as water quality is concerned, we don’t expect a lot of impact.” On Lake Champlain, the cables would be fed to the lake bottom from a ship along a predetermined deepwater route. An underwater camera and sonar system would identify small obstacles and route the cable around them.
“We’ll bring new renewable energy into the market. It will lower prices and mean lower emissions,” Donald Jessome, president and CEO of Transmission Developers Inc., said last week.
Vermont would not be directly affected by the project. The line — two pairs of cables carrying direct current — would run 111 miles under Lake
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The U.S. Department of Energy must approve the transmission line because it crosses an international border. The agency is holding a series of meetings along the power line route, including a session in Plattsburgh, N.Y., on July 16.
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Nevertheless, she said, Vermont “wants to keep an eye” on the proposal.
At the nonprofit Lake Champlain Committee, staff scientist Mike Winslow said he is still investigating the proposal. “We want to look at any potential ecological impact,” he said.
One possible danger apparently has been avoided: damage to any of the many historic sunken vessels in the lake, some dating back to the Revolutionary War.
“We worked with the company to ensure that the cable does not damage any of our irreplaceable cultural resources,” Art Cohn of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum said last week. “They have been very cooperative and flexiblible.
Once the cable is on the bottom, a submerged cable-burying vehicle would travel along its length, using powerful water jets to dig a narrow, 3-foot-deep trench under the cables. As the disturbed sediment resettles, it would bury the cable.
Jessome said the company hopes to have all its permits from the state of New York and the federal government by September 2011. Construction would last three years and would begin carrying power in 2015.
Contact Candace Page at 660-1865 or [email protected].
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