CHENANGO COUNTY – A Toronto-based investment firm – whose partners include the Canadian government at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels – has signed-on to back the $1.6 billion New York Regional Interconnect power line project, www.evesun.com/topics/news/NYRI/">NYRI officials announced Thursday.
The firm, Borealis Infrastructure, mainly finances public/private infrastructure projects and manages a government pension fund in Canada. The company reportedly holds over $5.6 billion dollars in assets, investing mainly in transportation, energy, infrastructure buildings, pipelines, water and wastewater projects.
The full extent of the firm’s relationship with NYRI was not disclosed. Officials at Borealis did not return a message seeking comment by press time.
“We are excited about the opportunity of having Borealis Infrastructure join the NYRI Project development team because of their global experience with large projects that serve public need in growing economies,” said Bill May, project manager for NYRI.
Attorney David Smith, a member of the power line opposition in Sullivan County, says the Borealis deal reinforces the fact the NYRI, while listed as a New York state company with headquarters in Albany, is overwhelmingly a foreign project.
“They have a mail-drop in Albany,” Smith said, pointing out that American Consumer Industries, a Delaware holding company that has had controlling interest in NYRI, is actually owned by Toronto-based energy developers Colmac Power. “The entire financial investment behind NYRI is Canadian – it’s foreign.”
NYRI is proposing to construct a 190-mile-long, 1,200 megawatt transmission line from Oneida to Orange County by 2011, claiming it will relieve the electricity bottlenecks in the Hudson Valley and New York City. In response, thousands along NYRI’s nearly 200 mile route have come out in opposition to the project, fearing it would destroy the weakened rural economy and landscape.
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