GUILDERLAND — Though it had no hand in approving the project’s benefits package, the Guilderland Industrial Development Agency will receive a portion of the county IDA’s fee for administering $67.6 million in tax breaks for the part of the Champlain Hudson Power Express project that runs through town. 

The broader $4.5 billion CHPE project, which received its final needed contract approvals in April, is 335 miles of underground cables bringing hydroelectricity generated in Québec to the New York City area.

The two five-inch diameter 1,250-megawatt high-voltage transmission cables traversing most of eastern New York State are to deliver enough energy for one million homes, according to the project developer.

Approximately 60 percent of the cables would be underwater, either under Lake Champlain to the north or the Hudson River to the south save for over 100 local miles where the cables would be run along railroad rights-of-way in Washington, Saratoga, Schenectady, Albany, and Greene counties. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has cordoned off part of the Hudson River contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that were dumped by General Electric decades ago. Trenching the river between Washington and Greene counties risked kicking up those toxins. 

In Albany County, CHPE’s underground cables would run for about 24 miles through the towns of Coeymans, Bethlehem, Guilderland, and New Scotland, and the villages of Ravena and Voorheesville. 

Each town and village had to OK the cable coming through their municipality, which was more of a formality because, if a municipality didn’t approve the line going through, the company would have moved to use eminent domain.

The Albany County IDA was the lead agency for the CHPE proposal, and has already approved a benefits package for the project, which has been in the works since 2008.

At the end of last year, CHPE estimated the capital cost of its project in Albany County to be about $228.6 million (an April update now puts that figure at $254 million). But the county and company based their benefits estimates on the $228.6 million figure. 

CHPE, which is owned by asset-management giant BlackRock, was granted a or PILOT of $163.7 million. The 30-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal was a 22.3-percent reduction from what CHPE would normally pay in taxes over the period, about $211 million.

Along with the $47 million break on property taxes the project is set to receive, CHPE is also receiving exemptions for sales taxes of $18.3 million and for mortgage-recording taxes, valued at $2.3 million — for tax breaks totaling approximately $67.6 million. 

The privately-funded project won’t create a single permanent job in the county, typically something that is looked for by a benefit-granting authority. 

“As a buried transmission line with no moving parts, the Project will not require day-to-day operations and maintenance efforts,” CHPE’s application to the Albany County IDA states. “Accordingly, the Project will not create permanent employment at the Project site.” 

CHPE has pulled applications from at least two other county IDAs after facing pushback over the company’s tax-break requests. 

In Dutchess County, in return for building $167 million of the project in the county, CHPE was seeking about $105.5 million in property-tax exemptions, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal, a $13.6 million sales-tax break, and $1.25 million in mortgage-recording tax exemption. The company said it plans to resubmit its request. 

While in Ulster County, CHPE proposed a 30-year PILOT of $29 million, compared to full taxes totaling $94 million over the period. 

The Albany County IDA would receive an administrative fee equal to 1 percent of the project’s in-county $228.6 million cost, about $2.28 million, a portion of which will be remitted to local IDAs, because the county IDA generally defers to local IDAs if a project is located within the local IDA’s borders.

For the local IDA fee, the county determined the percentage of the project, in both miles and dollars, running through each municipality and multiplied that number by 0.25 percent.

About 6.75 miles of cable will run through Guilderland.  

The mileage in Guilderland represents 27.85 percent of the overall Albany County portion of the project, or $63.7 million, which translates to an approximate fee of $159,000 for the Guilderland IDA.