LI roadsides to be ripped up for new power lines

Daily Point

Sixty-six miles of new lines needed for transmission

Get ready for some traffic slowdowns, ripped up roadsides and orange cones in your future. But don’t worry, Long Island, you still have time to object.

Next month, Long Islanders will be getting mailers and seeing ads alerting them to New York State’s plans to install 66 miles of new underground power transmission lines, mainly in Nassau County, starting sometime in 2026, The Point has learned.

It’s all part of the initial permitting process for the new lines proposed by the New York State Power Authority and the privately owned New York Transco for the $3.26 billion project, affecting about 10,000 downstate households who live near these new lines buried in the ground and under waterways.

The goal of adding up-to-date transmission lines is to expand the use of clean energy from upstate hydropower plants to Long Island, and to eventually provide to upstate users electrical power from wind-powered plants located off the Atlantic, officials say. Currently there’s a big difference in the environmental impact of New York’s energy generation — 92% of upstate energy comes from clean sources with zero carbon emissions, while 89% of downstate energy derives from fossil fuel-driven power plants.

The Point got an advance peek at some places where this power line construction will take place. In Nassau, about 58 miles will be placed underground in all three towns — Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay — and 18 villages. Affected roadways will include  Stewart Avenue, Franklin Avenue, and Northern Boulevard (Route 25A). In Suffolk, only 1.6 miles will be installed, in Huntington near Ruland Road. Along with the transmission lines, three new substations will be added.

There will be two main underwater transmission line routes — about nine miles in total. One will start at a substation on Nassau’s North Shore, enter Hempstead Bay near Glenwood Landing, and then reach a connecting station in New Rochelle. Another transmission line will stretch along Nassau’s Gold Coast, go into the waters beneath the Whitestone Bridge, and finally reach a substation in the Bronx.

Shannon Baxevanis, a spokeswoman for NY Transco, said that along with mailers and ad alerts, “open houses” will be held soon to seek public reaction to the plans, leading to state regulatory hearings necessary for final approval. She said that the planners “anticipate some changes” in some specific locations after hearing comments from the public. If all goes well with state regulators, she said, construction should be finished and the new transmission lines up and running by May 2030.

— Thomas Maier thomas.maier@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Getting along like a House on fire

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

All in the family for chairman Cox

New York State Republican chairman Ed Cox, a Suffolk County native and 77-year-old son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, retweeted on Saturday a commentary on ‘X’ that might have hit home for him.

The piece by onetime House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared Feb. 12 in the conservative American Spectator. Gingrich, pushed out of his powerful post long ago by fellow Republicans amid his own personal scandals, describes “establishment” hits decades apart against the Watergate-embroiled Nixon and against the election-denying ex-President Donald Trump.

The headline reads: “Trump Is the Man Nixon Couldn’t Be...” and the subhead, “There’s plenty of precedence for presidential law-breaking.”

Gingrich claims in the piece: “Tragically, Nixon went along with the pretense that Washington’s power structure would oversee a fair process [regarding charges against him] and seek an acceptable outcome. Instead, Nixon learned a hard lesson.”

“More than five decades later, President Donald Trump has learned that lesson too, and has decided to confront the establishment attack squad head-on with enormous courage and stamina.”

Nixon resigned in 1974 during his second term while facing impeachment for abusing his power during the run-up to his 1972 reelection, which involved a break-in at the Democratic campaign headquarters. Trump was impeached twice in his single term and acquitted on party-line votes in the Senate. Gingrich, while speaker in the 1990s, led the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, who also was acquitted.

The tweet by Cox was just two days before Trump (a one-time Clinton friend) sat down in state Supreme Court in Manhattan facing fraud charges related to his cover-up of hush-money payments to porn actress Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. (Whether Trump can show “enormous courage and stamina” while nodding off at the defense table is anyone’s guess.)

Cox, currently in his second stint as state GOP chairman, is tasked with trying to help a slate of New York candidates, from Congress to Senate to the State Legislature, overcome the blue-state advantages of the Democrats, with Trump at the top of the ticket. He has optimistically predicted the ex-president could win New York.

His wife Tricia Nixon Cox has long served as a trustee for the Richard Nixon Foundation, and on the boards of medical research facilities. The Coxes were married in 1971 in a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

CORRECTION: The New York State Power Authority plans to run an underwater transmission line beneath the Whitestone Bridge. An earlier version of this edition of The Point was incorrect.

Subscribe to The Point here and browse past editions of The Point here.