The state’s all-out push to turn New York City’s power grid green could kickstart a decade-long effort to bring hydro power from Canada along cable sunk into the Hudson River.
The Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) would traverse nearly 340 miles over land and under water on its way to a power generating station in Astoria, Queens.
It's one of seven renewable energy projects the state is considering as it tries to wean the city off its longstanding reliance on fossil fuels like natural gas and oil for its energy needs.
Without an infusion of renewable power, the state says it will have a hard time achieving its goal of 70 percent reliance on renewable sources of power – hydro, solar and wind-- by 2030.
But the CHPE project and another being developed by Rise Light & Power that also would run transmission cables along the bottom of the Hudson are facing a challenge from Riverkeeper.
The environmental watchdog fears the cables could disrupt already fragile freshwater fish habitats, like those of the endangered Atlantic sturgeon. And Riverkeeper worries that dams in Canada built to generate the hydro power will have an adverse effect on indigenous populations there.
“Hydro kills rivers,” John Lipscomb, Riverkeeper’s patrol boat captain and vice president for advocacy, said Monday during a tour of the river from Kingston to Poughkeepsie, where the cable would be laid.
“We 100 percent support bringing solar and wind energy to New York City but bring it with cables that are rigged on land," he said. "Don’t use the Hudson as an extension cord for New York City."
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Riverkeeper has a long history of challenging projects it considers a threat to the health of the river.
It opposed the expansion of natural gas plants to fill the energy gap after the closure of Indian Point, the shuttered nuclear power plant in Buchanan whose reactors were once cooled by Hudson River water.
And decades of legal challenges centered on Riverkeeper’s concern that a nuclear mishap could be disastrous for a densely populated downstate region became a factor in Entergy’s 2017 decision to shut down Indian Point.
But its latest battle over hydro power shows that even renewable energy sources won’t have an easy path ahead as the state tries to achieve what many consider to be some of the nation’s most ambitious clean energy targets.
Upstate,towns are challenging plans to put fields of solar panels on hundreds of acres of farmland so the state can hit its green energy targets for the lower Hudson Valley and New York City. The downstate region currently relies on fossil fuels for nearly 80 percent of its energy.
“We have to find ways of solving problems without trampling people and trampling rivers,” Lipscomb said. “We have to solve this fossil fuel problem. We have to green New York City but not at the expense of the indigenous people in eastern Canada and not at the further expense of the Hudson.”
In the coming weeks, New York’s Energy Research and Development Authority, which in October put out the call for more than 1,500 megawatts of power to be delivered to New York City, will make a decision on which of the projects gets the go ahead. (One megawatt powers between 800 and 1,000 homes.)
Doing a 180
Riverkeeper’s opposition represents an about-face from the position it took during state permitting hearings for the CHPE over the past decade.
The $2.2 billion project will bring low-cost hydro power down from Canada along some 200 miles of underwater cable and another 140 on land, which will course through dozens of Hudson River towns upstate.
In 2013, Riverkeeper’s lawyers said the project’s environmental impact, particularly on the sturgeon habitat, “will be minimal, will be avoided, minimized and mitigated to the greatest possible extent.”
Lipscomb now calls that assessment a mistake.
“We showed support for CHPE because we thought the only way to close Indian Point was to have on the books a replacement power source for one whole reactor,” Lipsomb said. “CHPE equals one whole reactor. That was the rationale…It was decided it was the lesser of evils.”
But discussions with indigenous populations in Canada, coupled with a study by the Center for Biological Diversity, led Riverkeeper to question whether hydro power was as “green” as they had thought.
“When we started to talking to representatives of the indigenous people in eastern Canada we started to realize that we had made a huge mistake,” Lipscomb said.
Recent studies suggest the electromagnetic energy from the cable could hurt fish populations in the river, particularly the Atlantic sturgeon, a pre-historic fish pushed to the brink of extinction by over-harvesting, Lipscomb said. The female sturgeon's eggs are prized for caviar.
Don Jessome, the president and CEO of Transmission Developers, which is developing the CHPE project, said the company has responded to Riverkeeper’s concerns from the moment the project was introduced.
The company agreed, for instance, to bring the cable out of the river in Haverstraw Bay so it wouldn’t disrupt the fish habitat there. The project will course over land for eight miles in several towns in northern Rockland County.
CHPE has agreed to put some $117 million into an environmental trust fund over the next 35 years, which could finance projects like the study of the sturgeon population. Riverkeeper and the environmental group Scenic Hudson have seats on the fund's board, along with state and city officials.
“We’re as mystified as anyone,” Jessome said. “Nothing has changed on our project. We said from day one we were going to be connecting to the Quebec system, to tap into their hydro and wind resources. The project has been extensively studied from an environmental perspective, how the cables are going to be installed, how they’re going to be operated.”
Hydro-Quebec, which will generate the power in Canada, says it has been working closely with indigenous populations to address their concerns. Over the past four decades, the company has signed 40 agreements with First Nations, including three in the last six months.
"Practices in matters of Indigenous relations have evolved steadily over time in Canada as in many countries throughout the world," spokeswoman Lynn St-Laurent said. "We have learned a great deal from our Indigenous partners in Québec. We have been and remain firmly committed to building relationships with Indigenous communities rooted in authenticity, mutual respect, and openness."
Riverkeeper isn’t alone in its concerns about cable being laid on the bottom of the Hudson.
Seven Hudson River towns, among them Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park and Rhinebeck, have sent letters to the state expressing their fear that sediment churned up during the laying of the cable could impact the drinking water supply they take in from the Hudson.
“Current plans do not adequately protect water quality, leaving our systems vulnerable to contamination or emergency shut-down,” they wrote in December. “With limited storage capacity, any service interruption would threaten public health and safety.”
Transmission Developers’ vice president Jennifer Laird-White says the company is responding to concerns expressed by the so-called Hudson 7.
“We’re all working together to make sure that the project is constructed in a way that the Hudson 7 is very comfortable with,” she said.
Connecting the Catskills
Rise Light & Power’s Catksill Renewable Connector plan would begin in Greene County and bring solar and wind power from upstate New York along 115-miles of underground by way of the Hudson, Harlem and East rivers to the Ravenswood Generating Station, a 60-year-old plant in Long Island City.
The Ravenswood station, which currently provides New York City with 20 percent of its energy needs, would over time generate just renewable energy, company officials say.
ItsCEO is Clint Plummer, one of the founders of Deepwater, the company that developed the nation's first offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.
“The reason I’m here and our entire business decision is around transitioning what is currently the largest fossil-fired generation facility in New York city to this hub for clean energy,” Plummer said. “Catskills is a vital part of that.”
Like the Block Island wind farm in Rhode Island, Catskills would move direct current along submerged cable.
“The technology is there and it's proven,” Plummer said. “It’s being developed on a very large scale. With the offshore wind projects that are now moving forward, we’re simply applying that same technology to bring clean energy from upstate to the city.”
He said the process is less invasive for communities along the route because roads are not being dug up with backhoes.
In the river, cable would be dropped from the back of a barge or small ship while jet plows below carve out a three-foot trench in the river bed, which would be backfilled.
The Catskills project would deliver 1,200 megawatts of power while the CHPE is slated for 1,250.
NYSERDA’s request for proposals calls for 1,500 megawatts so there’s a chance the state could give the go ahead to more than one project.
“We believe our project can co-exist with the CHPE project,” Plummer said.
He said Rise Light has been in discussions with Riverkeeper in recent months. “We see them as being an important voice in this and we’re going to listen very carefully,” Plummer said.
The CHPE project, if approved, could break ground later this year since it’s already won state and federal permits to do the work, Jessome said.
Jessome says it the company's proposal stands out from the others because it offers an around-the-clock source of energy. Wind and solar power tend to be more intermittent because they rely on the wind to blow and the sun to shine.
But, Jessome noted, with the amount of renewable energy needed to tip New York City's balance in favor of renewables, demand will open the way for a variety of energy sources.
“There is so much room for so many players here and we just need to get all of the projects across the finish line so we can achieve the very ambitious targets,” Jessome said.
Keep cables on land
Lipscomb has scanned the list of projects being considered by NYSERDA and prefers one being developed by Avangrid.
The Excelsior Connect would bring 1,200 megawatts of renewable energy from the Coopers Corners substation in Monticello to the Rainey substation in Queens.
Nearly all 108 miles of cable will run underground along existing rights-of-way controlled by the state Department of Transportation and the Thruway Authority.
“The underground construction in pre-existing roadways and rights-of-way limits local impact, significantly reduces need for property acquisition, protects the Hudson River, reduces the risk of challenging project opposition and minimizes impacts to environmen-
tally sensitive areas,” Excelsior’s proposal says.
Lipscomb thinks it would go a long way toward protecting the Hudson, which he said has “paid a terrible price” in helping New York City become one of the world’s greatest engines of economic growth.
“What we would really like is if New York City could keep in mind that it owes its wealth, its power, to the Hudson,” Lipscomb said. “That as we go forward to solve the energy problems for New York City, for the nation and for the world, let’s not do it on the back of the river. Let’s run these power cables on land. Let’s not run them in the river.”