Preventing Future NYC/NJ Blackouts Will Cost Tens of Thousands of Trees

BRIAN THOMPSON NBC New York 08/13/2010 16:22

There is no final number yet, but biologists at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area now admit to NBCNewYork that tens of thousands of trees would have to be cut down if power companies get their way to expand a high voltage transmission line through the four mile wide park.

In fact, whatever the final route picked for the major upgrade to the grid, that number seems likely to hold as the proposed right of way for the higher voltage line would expand from roughly a hundred feet to 300 feet as it runs through the upper Delaware River Valley to Roseland, N.J.

"I find that rather disturbing. I think we need to keep nature as it is and preserve it as best we can," said kayaker Lisa Michaels, 44, a teacher from Scranton, Pennsylvania who was paddling for the first time on the Delaware one recent summer day.

The preferred route runs through the heart of the 42 mile long unit of the National Park System as it expands an existing right of way that was built before the park was ever created.

Transmission towers would soar as high as 195 feet, in many cases more than double the height of existing towers and much higher than the existing tree line.

But it is the widening of the corridor, and the loss of those tens of thousand of trees, that are among the chief concerns of Park Service biologist Patrick Lynch.

"There's very unique vegetation communities and as such these communities harbor many unique animal species," said Lynch as the Park Service embarks on a major Environmental Impact Study that will not be finished until October of 2012.