ROUSES POINT, N.Y. (WCAX) – Barges with the Champlain Hudson Power Express project are currently out on Lake Champlain near Rouses Point, working to bring renewable energy from Quebec to New York City.
“We are going to provide up to 20% of New York City’s power through this cable,” said Khan Peoples, a senior project manager with TDI, the development company carrying out the installation of 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 costs roughly $6 billion and is expected to go until early winter.
“In water depths less than 150 feet, we will bury the cable to four feet below the lake bed and then in water depths at greater than 150 feet will be a surface length,” Peoples said.
Peoples says the work is being done in roughly 12-mile increments, 24 hours a day.
“Once we come to the end of the 12-and-a-half mile section, we stop. We take out the barges that are empty and we bring in new ones and we splice those cable ends together and then continue the laying process,” Peoples explained.
As they inch closer to Plattsburgh, he says they will avoid disruptions with the lake’s ferry traffic, as well as follow a precharted course that keeps the barges away from shipwrecks resting at the bottom of the lake.
“We have not heard from a lot of partners across the watershed in New York, Vermont or Quebec significant concerns about habitat impacts or species impacts from implementing the line in the lake,” said Meg Modley, the aquatic invasive species management coordinator with the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
Modley says the project is allocating more than $100 million in a remediation fund for environmental groups, which will be released in increments over the next 35 years.
“Projects are split between the Hudson and the Champlain drainage and the projects that we are looking at specifically in Lake Champlain are related to fish population surveys and habitat conservation and aquatic invasive species spread prevention,” Modley said. “So, we are looking at how can we mitigate the spread of invasive species through the Champlain Canal to our south, through the Chambly Canal to our north and if there are additional research needs, like economic impact studies of invasive species in the lake, that could be achieved with these funding dollars.”
The CHPE line is expected to be online to provide power to the Big Apple in May 2026.