POUGHKEEPSIE – The Hudson River Drinking Water Intermunicipal Council – the Hudson 7 – has asked the State Public Service Commission to amend the proposed route of the Champlain Hudson Power Express as it runs through the Mid-Hudson Valley.
The current plan has the cable buried beneath the floor of the Hudson River and the group of seven municipalities that get the water for their 106,000 residents is concerned with the sediment that would be stirred up and the ability to filter out dangerous contaminants, said Rhinebeck Mayor Gary Bassett, chairman of Hudson 7.
“The PCBs are the most highly profiled toxic gluten known to contaminate the river and it has hotspots, so it is the question of all of those chemicals that are now lying dormant in the bed of the river, you stir them up, are we able to put in place in all these water treatment plants that we have the ability to filter that out,” he said.
Bill Carlos, chairman of the Poughkeepsie Joint Water Board, said running the cable in the Hudson through the Hudson 7 area “represents a direct threat to every one of the 106,000 people who get their drinking water from the river.”
The group has proposed as an alternative to run the electric cable above ground along railroad tracks on the west side of the river.
The Hudson River Drinking Water Intermunicipal Council includes the towns of Esopus, Hyde Park, Lloyd and Rhinebeck, the City and Town of Poughkeepsie, and the Village of Rhinebeck.
