STONY POINT – The James A. Farley Bridge that carries Route 9W through town opened around 4 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20, days earlier than originally anticipated. The town’s major thoroughfare was closed for months to accommodate installation work for a 339-mile-long power line that would send hydropower generation from Canada to Queens.
For many small businesses along the town’s main thoroughfare, it was still too little, too late.
Rocky Alexander, owner of Rock’s Kitchen on 9W in Stony Point, had said business bowl-shaped nearly 40% since the work started.
The owners of Cut & Polished Salon, Annalisa Badstein and Lisa Gagliardo, said they fell behind on their rent in August for the first time in 35 years, blaming a drop in clientele due to the bridge detour.
Businesses, residents and elected officials have railed over traffic disruptions along 9W from Stony Point, through Haverstraw and into Clarkstown.
The North Rockland Chamber of Commerce has been collecting data from merchants about lost revenue during the construction period. The Chamber is creating a relief fund to help offset lost revenue.
CHPE recently upped its donation to the Chamber’s fund by $50,000. But critics say it’s not enough.
Rockland’s Ed Day threatens to yank tax deal
Rockland County Executive Ed Day on Friday, Oct. 17, threatened to reneg on a tax deal for Transmission Developers, owners of the Champain Hudson Power Express, called either CHPE or more often “Chippie” by locals.
The county, as well as town and village governments and school districts impacted by the construction, had entered PILOT agreements – or payments in lieu of taxes – that involve a lump sum from CHPE for future property tax breaks.
Once the project is operational, CHPE’s owner estimated it would pay $223 million in taxes to various Rockland entities over the first 40 years of the project.
“We are putting everyone on notice — Until CHPE takes full responsibility, the County will not enter into a PILOT agreement,” Day said in a statement. “Let them pay their taxes in full when the bill comes due just like we all do.”
While the bridge is reopened, night work will continue a bit longer in the corridor, according to CHPE, and repaving will be done next spring.
CHPE says it’s helped out
CHPE has given $150,000 for the North Rockland Chamber’s small business fund, with an extra $50,000 added last month as business owners this fall cited the traffic mess and blocked roadways that drove customers away.
“It was understood that construction would be temporarily disruptive to the businesses and residents in Rockland County, which is why in 2018 CHPE and local leaders negotiated a $31 million community benefit plan that includes $9 million in streetscape improvements for Stony Point in the business district along the 9W corridor,” company spokesperson Jennifer Laird-White said in a statement.
CHPE has also provided more than $500,000 in funding to Rockland nonprofits and small businesses, White had previously said.
The project, according to CHPE’s White, is expected to generate almost $300 million in taxes to Rockland communities once the project is operational.
White, in a statement after the bridge’s late afternoon opening on Oct. 20, said, “CHPE extends its continued appreciation to the North Rockland community and elected leaders for their patience during this significant period of construction.”
What’s CHPE and who benefits?
Transmission Developers proposed the Champlain Hudson Power Express years ago as a way to diversity New York’s energy sources.
The project takes hydropower-generated electricity and sends it to NYC.
Most of the cable from the Canadian border to New York City is being laid in the Hudson River. It comes on land in Stony Point and then back out to the Hudson in Clarkstown to avoid the Haverstraw Bay, a spawning ground for the endangered Atlantic sturgeon.
The state is counting on the $6 billion project to deliver more than 1,000 megawatts of clean energy to a downstate region, but not Rockland County.
It’s seen as a key part of filling the energy generation hole left by the 2021 shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, which also was not a power source for Rockland.
CHPE is expected to be in service by the spring of 2026.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Farley Bridge on 9W reopens but pipeline work still ruffles Rockland merchants, leaders
Reporting by Nancy Cutler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
1 comment
The article does not mention that NY ratepayer subsidized CHPE transmission line bringing foreign energy/ electricity from Canadian public utility HydroQuebec for exported profit, is a subsidiary of Blackstone orivate equity group. Private equity firms are responsible for 1.17 giga tons of annual emmissions, according to the Prívate Equity Climate Risks Project. The mixture of utility delivery and private equity profiteering is something that should make us think twice and look deeper. Hydropower is touted by such profiteers as green, but there are huge concerns about emissions of greenhouse gases over the life cycle of the vast concrete dams (most of which are on stolen Indigenous land homes.) concern arises as well as about emissions from damned waters in such mega-reservoirs. The climate & water/ hydrologically disruptive energy which will be carried in these lines, if they continue to be built, will have negative impacts will make business/ traffic disruptions look trivial!