Work is getting underway on the Champlain/Hudson Power Express Project that’ll deliver about 6-billion-dollars-worth of hydropower from Canada, along the entire length of Lake Champlain & the Hudson river, more than 330 miles, to New York City. TDI, the company installing the cable, is working around the clock now to bury the transmission line that’ll carry more than 1250 Megawatts of renewable electricity to New York City.
The Senior Project Manager says the work laying the transmission line started at the northern tip of the lake near Rouses Point and is being done in 12-mile sections, 24 hours a day. Work burying the cable on Lake Champlain will last through the end of the year. As they inch closer to Plattsburgh they will avoid disruptions with the lake’s ferry traffic, as well as follow a pre-charted course that keeps the barges away from the historic shipwrecks resting at the bottom of the lake.
Meg Modley with the Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program says the project is allocating more than $100 million in remediation funds for environmental groups, which will be released over the next 35 years. On Lake Champlain the money will go to help conserve fish habitat and combat invasive species like the Round Goby, which is slowly working its way closer to the lake.
The project is scheduled to be up & running, and providing power to New York City by May of 2026.