The Public Services Commission must conduct a full hearing on all environmental impacts caused by the proposed $3 billion Blackstone Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) transmission corridor.

SUPPORT EQUITABLE ENERGY SOLUTIONS FOR NEW YORK AND REJECT CANADIAN HYDROELECTRICITY!

To address the climate emergency, New Yorkers are demanding a fair and just transition to a renewable energy economy and a sustainable society. Unfortunately, Canadian hydropower is being promoted as climate solution for New York when it is not: rather this electricity is a climate and humanitarian disaster that puts the burdens of New York’s energy demands on marginalized frontline communities in Canada.  

Provincial government-owned hydropower monopolies should be treated like fossil fuels. It has been re-defined as “renewable” under New York law, emits massive amounts of greenhouse gases and destroys rivers, and carbon sequestering forests. The social injustices of Canadian hydro are even worse. For close to 100 years, Canada’s state-owned hydropower monopolies have stolen Indigenous lands, displaced people from their homes,  poisoned wild food supplies with the lethal neurotoxin methylmercury, thus forcing cultural genocide. The hydropower industry is a vestige of Canada’s colonialism; all of Hydro-Quebec's megadams which supply hydroelectricity for export to New York continues state-sponsored violence and racism against Indigenous peoples and their communities.

Indigenous land and water protectors seeking justice from the Canadian hydropower industry for   methylmercury poisoning and displacement from their traditional lands. Ottawa, Canada 2019.

Governor Hochul wants to make New Yorkers complicit in this injustice by supporting the CHPE hydropower transmission corridor. This corridor will import 1,250 megawatts of Canadian electricity from Hydro-Quebec’s massive, destructive dams in Canada -- 1,500 miles away -- via the 330-mile CHPE corridor from Canada to NYC. CHPE’s route through New York State turns our public roads and waterways into energy highways for private profiteers. It will disrupt scenic public roads through villages and business districts and drills under iconic rivers and lakes: Lake Champlain, Hudson River, Catskill Creek, Harlem River, East River.

CHPE is a project of Wall Street financier Blackstone Group/Transmission Developers Inc. (TDI) which rose from the ashes of the failed Lehman Brothers after the 2008 financial crisis. Blackstone is trying to evade public scrutiny by sidestepping the public process. CHPE is a bad deal for New York in every way: it perpetuates climate injustice, emits greenhouse gases, and cannot deliver on jobs.

Since 2013, New York’s Public Service Commission (PSC) has approved and amended the flawed CHPE corridor which should never be built. See PSC site www.dps.ny.gov. Case No. 10-T-0139

CHPE has never provided accurate maps and installation plans and has disregarded the PCP's and nucleotides that will be suspended within the 110 miles from the installation into the Hudson River.

In 40 years, the "decommissioning plan" for the CHPE lines is to abandon the transmission cables under the Hudon River. The Hudson River is an ecosystem, not a transmission corridor. Protect and restore rivers everywhere!

CHPE’s proposed new route

Blackstone’s application for the amended PSC permit is flawed and incomplete. Some of the problems are:  

In Rockland County:

• Blackstone only made vague maps for the new North Rockland route publicly available on December 6, 2019. These must be fully explained to the interested public and business community.      

• Blackstone must explain how its so-called “minor changes” will impact the North Rockland financial and economic corridor and how the right of way will be managed within the “New North Rockland” route as it pertains to existing infrastructure, repairs, legal jurisdictions, and emergencies.

• Maps of proposed CHPE route through Rockland County, NY:

                                             

In New York City Blackstone must explain exactly how and where the rerouting will occur in Queens and elsewhere.

In Rouse’s Point in the Village of Champlain, Blackstone must provide full and complete maps documenting Hydro-Quebec’s border crossing over land.

In the Town of Putnam Station, NY Blackstone must explain how it will acquire one mile of private roadway by inverse condemnation and how it will mitigate impacts on private farmlands and businesses in a protected Agricultural District without disrupting farm use, the environment and water rights.

Sign our petition to let the PSC know these flaws must be corrected and an environmental impact statement prepared!

MORE: Blackstone’s CHPE project is a bad deal for New York!

• Canadian megadams are a morally and socially unacceptable way to generate electricity. By importing this electricity over CHPE New Yorkers become complicit in the cultural genocide of Indigenous people in Canada. Hydro-Quebec’s operations displace frontline, predominantly Indigenous communities, cause cultural genocide by destroying traditional hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering grounds and by poisoning traditional food sources with the neurotoxin methylmercury.

• CHPE can’t deliver on jobs or the economy. CHPE will create 26 direct, full-time jobs for New Yorkers and approximately 300 temporary construction jobs - that’s $ 10 million per job since the corridor will cost $ 3 billion. This money is better spent on conservation, efficiency and innovative renewables.

• Canadian hydroelectricity is bad for the climate. CHPE will not reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide according to a recent Energyzt study and peer review science showing hydropower emissions can be comparable to fossil fuels.

• New York will send its energy dollars to Quebec Province instead of investing locally. Building CHPE means New Yorkers are locking into trying to secure a long-term contract to buy electricity from Hydro-Quebec, instead of investing in local renewables and jobs in-state.

• Blackstone and the Quebec Government are greenwashing CHPE in an effort to generate profits for investors and Quebec.

Sign the petition and submit your comments by June 15, 2020!

To learn more or get involved, visit our website - www.northeastmegadamresistance.org and follow us on social media:

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Thank you!

-The Team at North American Megadam Resistance Alliance