Albany - The state Senate has called on New York’s congressional delegation to overhaul a two-year-old federal law that makes it easier to build major power-line projects, like New York Regional Interconnect. By a unanimous vote yesterday, the Republican-controlled Senate passed a resolution that charged that the law, which allows Washington to override state decisions on such projects, overstepped federal authority. The resolution also criticized the Department of Energy’s decision to hold hearings on the law far from NYRI’s proposed route. Its sponsors included Sens. John Bonacic, R-C-Mount Hope, and Bill Larkin, R-Cornwall-on-Hudson.

HARRISBURG, June 12 – The state House of Representatives today adopted a resolution sponsored by House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese urging Congress to repeal a portion of the 2005 Federal Energy Act which would usurp state’s rights to site electric transmission lines.

Sen. Charles Schumer urged federal officials Thursday to change their plans for public hearings on a proposed electricity "transmission corridor" in New York State. Schumer, D-N.Y., said the hearing sites of Rochester and New York City are simply too far from the central New York region where the corridor decision could pave the way for construction of a new power line called New York Regional Interconnect. The Department of Energy on Wednesday announced the Rochester meeting, though no date has been set.

A map prepared as part of the PJM presentation shows the 500-kilovolt line traveling northeast from the Susquehanna plant in Salem Township, Luzerne County. It would travel northeast, mostly parallel to Interstate 81, past Wilkes-Barre and Scranton to Clarks Summit. From there, it would run due east toward Port Jervis, N.Y., before slicing southeast through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area into northern New Jersey. The line would end at a substation at Roseland, near Livingston, N.J.

That's the question for opponents of the massive power line that could slice local farms, fields, forests, towns and rivers. In an unprecedented show of grass-roots democracy last year, thousands of mid-Hudson residents united to fight the 12-story-tall power line that could cut through Sullivan, Orange and Pike counties. Nearly 1,000 thousand men, women and children jammed the western Orange Village of Otisville to protest the New York Regional Interconnect lines that could destroy the village's Main Street.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., has talked on the telephone with federal energy Secretary Samuel Bodman about the location of a public hearing on New York Regional Interconnect Power. The Department of Energy has scheduled a public meeting in Rochester, which is more than 200 miles from the communities that would be affected by the power line. Schumer described the decision as “inexplicable and noxious” and has asked Bodman to hold at least one hearing in the Utica, Oneonta/Norwich or Middletown areas.