The burying of new higher-voltage retransmission power lines along a five-mile stretch between Port Washington and Great Neck is still a possibility, but it won’t happen anytime soon. And it certainly won’t happen before or in lieu of the completion of the installation of 80-foot utility poles this summer.
“We’ve absolutely committed to undergrounding the project, completely and wholly,” PSEG Long Island spokesman Jeffrey Weir said, “as long as the Town of North Hempstead is willing to pay for it; it hasn’t progressed thus far yet to my knowledge.”
Before potentially acting, the town is waiting for information from PSEG, like feasibility studies, alternative routes and other studies to aid the consultant it hired, Torben Aabo, of Power Cable Consultants, said Dina De Giorgio told The Port News. “In order for us to do anything with respect to PSEG burying the wires we need the information for our consultant to evaluate the cost and feasibility.”
That request was made over a month ago, and the town is still waiting, De Giorgio said. “PSEG is not cooperating.”
Town officials also met with representatives from the State’s Department of Public Service (DPS), the body that regulates public utilities, to express concern about the way the project moved forward with little or no input from the community.
DPS has, at the town’s urging and at the direction of state elected officials, launched an independent review of the PSEG project and the costs associated with burying the power lines. “I look forward to DPS’s findings, and I know our community does as well,” Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth said.
The entire project, which consists of the stringing of a new 69kV transmission line atop new 80-plus-foot utility poles, dates back to early 2013.
The project was initially started under an arrangement between National Grid and the Long Island Power Authority, which PSEG inherited with its takeover of the utility grid on Jan. 1. The older poles only carried a distribution line—a lower powered, 13kV line to homes—but the taller poles will support a 69 kV transmission line at the very top with the older distribution line in the middle support area.
“Given demand, we needed to add another 69kV transmission line to ensure that everyone would have electric power and that was reliable and consistent,” Weir said, adding that specific portions of the project related to being able to sustain a Sandy-like storm have to do with the length of the poles—each 85-ft. in total length and able to withstand 130 mph winds.
Spanning six miles, only five miles of the project will be placed overhead using 220 new poles—each about 80 ft. tall—with one mile of the project’s cable being laid underground within the village of Thomaston. That notion has many residents upset that the entire project wasn’t initially buried.
“The portion that’s going underground has everything to do with the nature of the project and how it can be engineered,” Weir said. “It’s just not possible to engineer it to go overhead there.”
Weir said residents should not be concerned over any electromagnetic field emissions as “they almost cancel each other out… often times when you put a higher voltage on there [it] can cancel out any additional emissions that may have been by having the 13kV below that and so it does not increase the EMF to a degree that is harmful in any degree, shape or form and in fact can lessen the amount” and that more EMF fields were generated by a hairdryer than the new lines.
But residents have additional concerns about their well being.
As a result, Bosworth has asked state representatives to request that the Department of Environmental Conservation launch an investigation into the possible environmental and health issues relating to the use of penta (a wood preservative) or any other chemical that may be found in the surrounding soil resulting from the pole installation in the communities of Port Washington, Manhasset and Great Neck.
(Next Week: What happens to the existing poles and wires?)
By Karen Talley & Geoffrey Walter
