ROUSES POINT, NY (WCAX) – Barges from the Champlain Hudson Power Express project are currently on Lake Champlain near Rouses Point, working to bring renewable energy from Quebec to New York City.
“We will be supplying up to 20% of New York City’s electricity needs through this cable,” said Khan Peoples, senior project manager at TDI, the development company installing the cable.
After more than 15 years of planning, Hydro-Quebec and New York State’s Champlain Hudson Power Express project is now underway on Lake Champlain. The project will cost around $6 billion and is expected to last until early winter.
“In water depths of less than 150 feet, we will bury the cable four feet below the lake bottom, and in water depths greater than 150 feet, it will have a surface length,” Peoples said.
Peoples says the work will be done around the clock in sections of about 12 miles each.
“At the end of the 12.5-mile section, we stop. We take out the empty barges and bring in new ones. Then we connect the cable ends together and then continue the laying process,” Peoples explained.
As they approach Plattsburgh, they will avoid disruptions to the lake’s ferry traffic and follow a set course that keeps the barges away from shipwrecks on the lake bottom, he explains.
“We have not heard any significant concerns from many partners across the basin in New York, Vermont or Quebec that implementation of the pipeline in the lake could impact habitat or biodiversity,” said Meg Modley, invasive aquatic species management coordinator for the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
Modley says the project will put more than $100 million into a cleanup fund for environmental groups, which will be paid out in phases over the next 35 years.
“The projects are split between the Hudson and Champlain watersheds, and the projects we’re looking at specifically in Lake Champlain are related to fish population surveys and habitat conservation and preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species,” Modley said. “So we’re looking at how we can mitigate the spread of invasive species through the Champlain Canal to the south and the Chambly Canal to the north, and whether there’s any additional research that needs to be done, such as studies on the economic impacts of invasive species in the lake, that could be accomplished with these grant funds.”
The CHPE line is scheduled to go online in May 2026 and supply the Big Apple with electricity.
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