Are the Hudson Valley waters still beeing used as dumping grounds?

Aug. 17, 2010 - PRLog -- Each year millions of citizens spend time in or on the Hudson River and the waters surrounding New York City. Citizen activism has made it increasingly unacceptable  for government and industry to treat our rivers as dumping grounds.

Since the passage of the Clean Water Act, water quality has improved dramatically and over the past several decades, citizen activism has made it increasingly unacceptable for government and industry to treat our rivers as dumping grounds. Riverkeeper, LDEO and Queens College are sampling water from aboard Riverkeeper’s patrol boat at more than 80 sites on the Hudson from New York Harbor to the confluence of the Mohawk and the Hudson above Troy, NY.

A New Type Of Threat – The Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine power cable project linking the Montreal area to the New York City suburb of Yonkers.

Now the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is proposing an underwater cable between Montreal and Yonkers. The CHPE tries to skirt difficulties encountered by other proposals by presenting itself as an “environmentally benign” solution, while the proposed cable electro–magnetic field will have an effect on sensitive fish and wildlife habitat.

The proposed cable would have a length of 335 miles (539 km) between the Canada-U.S. border and its southern terminal, in Yonkers, New York. The two 5-inch (127 mm) cables would be buried at a depth of 3 feet (91 cm) under Lake Champlain and the Hudson River between Albany and Manhattan.

The cable would cross the border under Lake Champlain and would run southward to the northern entrance of the Champlain Canal at Whitehall. On its way to the Hudson, the cables would be briefly taken out of the canal and buried for 2.1 miles (3.4 km), in order to avoid 3 locks. In order to avoid the PCB clean-up site in Hudson River, a 73-mile (117 km) section the line would be taken out of the Champlain Canal, north of Fort Edward and buried along Canadian Pacific and CSX rail rights of way. The cable would re-enter the Hudson River south of Albany, in the Selkirk area*.

The proposed cable would resume its path below the riverbed to reach a HVDC converter station to be built in Yonkers. From this point, the current would be sent to New York by AC cables.

Riverkeeper** called on the DOE to conduct a careful, comprehensive environmental review that focused on the following key concerns; disturbance of sensitive fish and wildlife habitat, impact of the suspension of contaminated sediments on aquatic biota and local drinking water supplies, impacts of the electro-magnetic field generated by the cable on aquatic species, and full analysis of the route ‘alternative’ that would locate the cable along the railroad right of way, rather than in the river.

References:

Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champlain_Hudson_Power_Express

WineDIneGuideMagazine: http://winedineguide.com/w/

* Transmission Developers Inc. (2010), “Project Details: Route Maps”, Champlain Hudson Power Express, http://www.chpexpress.com/background.php, retrieved 2010-08-02

** Call for Careful Review of Champlain Cable Project – Published on 08-16-2010 on Riverkeeper website: http://www.riverkeeper.org/news-events/news/preserve-river-ecology/call-for-careful-review-of-champlain-cable-project/

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