A new greenhouse is going to help grow fresh produce for North Country families in need. It was built by volunteers at St. Joseph’s Outreach Center in West Plattsburgh right next to the food pantry and soup kitchen.
Once up and running, sometime early next year, it’s estimated the produce grown there will help feed roughly 200 local families. The greenhouse was built by the JCEO, and funded by Hydro-Quebec, who has teamed with TDI on the Champlain Hudson Power Express project that’s laying a cable along the bottom of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River to deliver billions of dollars’ worth of electricity from Quebec to New York City beginning in May of 2026.
Hydro-Quebec has pledged to spend more than 130-million dollars on projects like this in communities from the Quebec border all the way to New York City. Cornell Cooperative Extension will help to train the nearly 3 dozen master gardeners who will volunteer to work at the greenhouse and grow the produce.
JCEO CEO Nicole Laurin joins us to share more about the project and the growing food insecurity for hundreds of families here in the North Country.