1,100 km of cable linking Labrador to island

Nalcor Energy has submitted its environmental impact statement for the proposed Labrador-island transmission link that would bring Muskrat Falls power to Newfoundland.

The transmission line is designed to carry up to 900 megawatts of power across the Strait of Belle Isle.

It features a pole path that cuts clean across the island, and halfway across Labrador.

There will be 1,100 hundred kilometres of cable, including 30 kilometres under water.

In the way are hundreds of cabins, lakes and ponds, water supplies for a half dozen communities, a handful of provincial parks, snowmobile and ATV trails, and a few farms for good measure.

Nalcor hopes it has all of the potential problems worked out.

"Iceberg traffic or iceberg scour potential in the strait is a design consideration for us," Gilbert Bennett, Nalcors vice-president in charge of the Lower Churchill project, told CBC News. "Lots of investigation work done there."

The whole transmission plan depends on three cables that will stretch across the strait of Belle Isle.

"There is a water depth in the Strait of Belle Isle that we need to be below in order to protect the cable," Bennett explained. "So one of the techniques we're using here is horizontal directional drilling. We leave the shore, drill out under the Strait of Belle Isle, and then place our cable in that conduit and then put it on the sea bed and protect it with rock from there."

Building the on-land portion of the transmission corridor will mean constructing new roads into places where people aren't normally found.

"Some people are happy that we're increasing access to certain areas for recreational activities, some other folks aren't so pleased with that," Bennett said. "So that's a balance and that's an important part of the consultation and dialogue."

This environmental review involves transmission of Muskrat power.

The generation aspect of the project was released from environmental assessment in March, following a lengthyand at times controversial federal-provincial panel process.