6 Nassau school districts urge PSC to suspend conditional approval of Propel project

With scheduled construction just weeks away, six Nassau school districts on Thursday called on the state Public Service Commission to "immediately suspend" its conditional approval of the Propel NY Energy project, saying a dearth of information leaves them unable to develop contingency plans around the project.

The request marks a ratcheting up of concerns by the initial three school districts that were a party to the state process to review Propel, districts that have already called for the state to reject its recent conditional approval of the plan. The North Shore, Roslyn and Syosset districts were joined on Thursday by Manhasset, Garden City and Hicksville school districts in expressing concerns about the cable.

Propel, a 90-mile high-voltage transmission line linking Long Island to the Bronx and Westchester, still awaits a key approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before construction can start. The state must also rule on a water-quality certificate for the project.

At a transportation depot for the North Shore School District in Glenwood Landing feet from where a new Propel substation is to be built, school officials expressed frustration with the state process and the developers in getting information about the project plans.

"We are calling on the PSC to immediately suspend its approval of the Propel NY underground energy transmission project until the severe logistical impacts and critical safety details surrounding our school campuses ... are fully studied and resolved," said Tom Dolan, superintendent of the North Shore Central School District.

Propel in a statement said its teams have "spent years engaging with schools to implement enhanced measures that safely minimize the temporary construction impacts of this critical transmission project."

Noting schools "rely on dependable electricity every day," Propel added, "an unreliable grid would create far greater disruption to students, school operations, and overall health and safety than the temporary impacts associated with standard construction work."

Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy, president of the Roslyn Board of Education, called on state regulators to "at the very least makes these construction schedules around the school year calendar, guarantee emergency access" and "give our parents the health and safety guarantees they deserve."

The complaints by school districts follow more than a year of negotiations during the state approval process for Propel.

Thomas Rogers, superintendent of the Syosset Central School District, said, "Here’s today’s problem. The PSC gave Propel a passing grade before they’d even finished their homework."

Rogers said developing mitigation plans around the project is impossible because "we still don’t know when, where or how the trenches for these underground cables will be dug. Without construction plans it is impossible to know the project’s full impact or how to minimize that impact."

What the districts do know, he added, is that construction "could create severe operational disruptions that will gridlock our roads and cut off our schools." The developers' traffic studies, he noted, concluded that "months of construction will cause major delays during daytime hours," and that construction "will cut roadways in half, barricade driveways serving school campuses, isolate central bus maintenance and fueling facilities like this one, and create major traffic congestion across communities."

A PSC spokeswoman didn’t immediately provide a comment in response to the districts’ requests.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.