Underground Vermont Proposal May Bury Northern Pass

Union Leader reporter Kathryn Marchocki reports here about a new proposal to bury--under Lake Champlain and underground--a 150-mile, 1000MW transmission line that could make the Northern Pass proposal redundant.

Like Northern Pass, the so-called "New England Clean Power Link" would transmit electricity from Hydro-Quebec to Ludlow, VT, where it would enter the New England grid. (There are many who seriously question the description of the large-scale hydropower facilities as "clean", and typically there is no guarantee that power transmitted on such lines will always be hydropower.)

Northern Pass has consistently argued that burying such a line would be cost prohibitive, and that it's own overhead transmission line was the only economic alternative for those who see benefit in allowing Hydro-Quebec to export more large scale hydropower to the southern New England market. The new proposal adds to the growing evidence that burial of transmission lines is not only possible, but that there are transmission developers actively seeking to permit and complete the projects based on current projections.

Given that Northern Pass's lack of legal access to its preferred route, the growing political demand for an underground alternative along transportation corridors, the need for Special Use Permits to use the White Mountain National Forest, and the overwhelming public opposition to Northern Pass's overhead proposal and the determination to fight as long as it takes, it would seem that the underground proposal in Vermont has a far greater likelihood of success, even at this early stage.