Propel NY's profits are private, risks public

NY Transco has spent years selling Propel NY as a public-spirited effort to “strengthen the grid.” That is the sales pitch. The business model is profit.

NY Transco is owned by affiliates of Con Edison, National Grid, Iberdrola/Avangrid and Fortis/Central Hudson, and is developing Propel with the New York Power Authority. These are sophisticated utility interests pursuing a highly protected, ratepayer-funded investment.

Based on NY Transco’s estimated share of the project and its federally approved rate terms, its owners should collect approximately $132 million annually as a return on their investment once the project is fully in service. Ratepayers would separately cover borrowing costs, depreciation, operating expenses, taxes, and other approved charges.

The protection begins before the project is even completed. Federal regulators have authorized NY Transco to earn returns on construction spending while Propel is being built. It may also seek recovery of qualifying costs if the project is abandoned for reasons beyond its control.

In plain English: If Propel succeeds, the owners earn enormous returns. If it fails, ratepayers still pay. The profits are private; the risk is public.

And Long Island bears the physical consequences.

Propel would place approximately 80 miles of new underground transmission lines through densely developed communities, much of it beneath public roads. That means years of trenching, lane closures, detours, construction staging, utility conflicts and restricted access across some of the Island’s busiest and most constrained roadways.

In Glen Head and Glenwood Landing, work would affect Glen Cove Avenue, Glen Head and Glenwood roads, Shore Road and other critical routes. These communities have few practical ways in and out. Closing lanes on one major road will not merely inconvenience the people living there. It will push traffic onto surrounding streets, delay school buses and emergency vehicles, harm local businesses and turn ordinary travel into daily gridlock.

Then comes the restoration. Long Islanders know what often follows utility work: narrow patches, uneven pavement, sunken trenches and roads that fail years before they should. A multibillion-dollar project should be required to restore every disturbed roadway curb to curb and remain responsible for settlement and pavement failure long after construction ends.

The risks do not stop at the shoreline. Propel would cut through Hempstead Harbor, disturbing sediment and habitat in a waterway that communities have spent decades restoring.

On land, Propel would require excavations at intervals along the cable route. Project applications state these excavations would be approximately 37 feet long, 13 feet wide, and 10 feet deep, with final locations and dimensions depending on site conditions. Some would be located beneath or beside local streets, including routes used by children walking to school. Underground electrical-vault failures elsewhere have caused explosions, injuries, shattered pavement, and heavy manhole or vault covers to be launched into the air.

Residents near existing substations and high-voltage lines also deserve a real cumulative electromagnetic-field analysis. Modeling only the new cables does not tell families their total exposure from the infrastructure already surrounding them plus Propel. Four post-construction measurement transects across an almost 90-mile project are not a meaningful substitute.

The grid may need strengthening. That does not make every route, every design or every financial arrangement reasonable.

Before approving Propel, the Public Service Commission should follow the money and confront the full cost: decades of private returns purchased with public money, public roads, public waterways and public risk.

Bruce Kennedy is a Glen Cove resident and the village administrator of Sea Cliff. The views expressed are his own.