NORWICH – A $30,000 donation from an anonymous source has infused some much-needed cash into the coffers of a local grassroots organization committed to fighting the proposed NYRI powerline, but will it be enough?

“It’s a shot in the arm,” said Eve Ann Shwartz, co-chair of the group, Stop NYRI. While she and her colleagues say the amount will certainly help wage the legal battle against the high voltage transmission line project, they know, however, that more will be needed to see the fight to the end.

On Thursday night, the opposition group put out a call to local business leaders, asking them to step up their contributions to the cause.

“We’ve got to fight this to the end,” said Stop NYRI’s volunteer fundraising chair Susan Tallman, as she addressed members of the local business community in a meeting co-sponsored by her organization and Commerce Chenango. “Every dollar counts.”

To date, she said, Stop NYRI has received more financial support from private citizens than it has from businesses. The group’s current fundraising goal is to raise $46,000, or $1,000 per mile of the electric transmission line’s proposed route through Chenango and Madison counties. Thanks to the anonymous donation, they are well on their way to reaching that goal.

While some of the money raised by the organization does stay locally to promote the group’s local activities, a large portion of the amount they raise goes to Communities Against Regional Interconnect, a coalition of seven upstate New York counties and five community action groups to which they belong.

According to Tallman, CARI has spent in the neighborhood of $2 million fighting the power line project on both the state and federal level. While this money has been “incredibly well spent,” she added, it pales in comparison to the $25 million NYRI has invested in the project so far despite the fact that they “haven’t even put a shovel in the ground.”

Over the last three years, Stop NYRI has contributed roughly $90,000 to CARI, Tallman said. This year, they plan to be “more ambitious” in their pledge to the organization.