Gimme shelter from this thinking

It was all so depressingly Western New York.

The folks who run the state Power Authority are finally coming off their high horses after, well, forever. They show up in town to hold a board meeting and invite movers and shakers to give them an earful.

Nearly a dozen take them up on the offer, but most showed up mostly to put their hand out.

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

Granted, some of them are pols and bureaucrats from cities and towns that got shorted when the authority was dispensing cash and cheap power four years ago in a successful effort to gain local support for its effort to get a new 50-year license to operate the Niagara Power Project.

Hey guys, I feel for you, but that ship has sailed.

Then there was the owner of the HSBC Tower who asked for a block of cheap power for downtown business interests. I sat there and thought to myself (1) cheap power has way more value to energy-intensive manufacturers than commercial operations such as banks and offices, which consume a lot less electricity, and (2) is there any subsidy program the boys downtown won't try and lay their hands on?

Folks, I've seen Rich Kessel, the new NYPA boss, in action three times and think I'm getting a handle on the guy. And if you play your cards right, you have a good chance of coming away happy.

But playing your cards right doesn't involve simply saying gimme, gimme, gimme.

The authority under Kessel has opened preliminary discussions with Hydro-Quebec about buying loads of cheap hydropower, a good chunk of which could end up here.

Kessel also seems open about rethinking how cheap hydropower generated at the Niagara Power Project is used to promote economic growth here.

Finally, he's big on wind power, which means NYPA could be the catalyst to helping this region develop its wind resources. We're something like the 4th windiest urban area east of the Mississippi. It's good for more than just a nasty wind chill on a January night.

My advice, therefore, it to focus on the big picture. Kessel is.

A little cheap juice for this guy's office building or a little scratch for that pol's town government isn't going to get WNY out of its economic fix.

This region blew a major opportunity to get hydro right in the way it mishandled the negotiations involving the relicensing of the Power Project. As one environmental attorney described it: "Community against community, group against group. It was clear there were a lot of people out for their own piece of the pie."

I'm not suggesting those dynamics are at play this time around. Not yet, anyway.

But people, please, recognize there's an opportunity to get it right. Stop with the "gimme" stuff.

Hopefully Kessel is hearing more enlightened perspectives in private meetings he'd had with people around town. But it makes me wonder, given our track record as a community.

Comments

[Camino Reality]

Coal is being used to produce electricity in Buffalo which is poisoning the air in Tonawanda with benzine fumes. Wonder why there is so much cancer in Buffalo?

Meanwhile down the river there is more than adequate electricity to power all of Buffalo's needs. But no we need to sell this electricity elsewhere for profits over the health of WNY's.

Burn a pound of coal and make a pound of coal.

[NB]

NYPA (hydro) electricity and Huntley (coal) electricity have one thing in common - cheapness, and production costs from mostly or completely depreciated facilities that are a fraction of what it costs for new run-of-river units (about 200 MW of capacity for the Niagara River), wind turbines or a new coal burner. Actually, even wind turbines make electricity cheaper than could be done with a new nuke or a new coal burner, but none of these make electricity for less than 0.5 c/kw-hr, which is the case with NYPA.

But, cheap electricity just leads to energy wastage, unless the electricity is the major cost component of a production process. Classic examples of energy inefficiency are in places like Jamestown and Lake Placid, where cheap NYPA juice offers no incentive to be efficient, and average per capita electricity use is at least twice the state average. The trick is to get reasonable costs made by renewable methods which will encourage efficiency and yet still allow for a decent life. That way we don't export money for fossil fuels that are just a form of consumption, not investment, and for that consumption, we also get a ruined climate via Global Warming. And if we play our cards right, we could even get new manufacturing jobs via making these renewable energy systems, especially the run-of-river units or wind turbines.

But, so far, most of the business "leaders" in this region, and the many of the government officials - many of which were purchased by or are a part of corporate/wealthy "well-monied class" - have blown it big time. Perhaps they were just born to be bad card players....that's maybe why the Seneca's tried to set up the Gambling Palace here - so many of the local business types and their purchased governmental "units" and "friends" (at least, as long as the money is there) are such lousy card players and loser gamblers. And a potential gold mine for the owners of the Gambling Joint.

As for spelling, the word is "benzene".

[Camino Reality]

You write benzene and I write benzine. There are in fact two different chemicals that have exactly the same English pronunciation.

What holds more gravity if one of our family members, a neighbor, or ourselves get a cancer or a respiratory disease that leads to earlier death, that was caused by chemical refining of petroleum products, or from another chemical produced from making electricity from coal?

My point is there is plenty electricity created every day by the Niagara Power Project that is clean and does not pollute Tonawanda. Yet the Huntley Plant creates electricity for the City of Buffalo while harming the residents of Tonawanda with toxic pollution.

Perhaps those in New York State who are on boards and in government should be held responsible for selling off local produced hydro energy, and by doing so causing only a few miles away a coal burning plant to spread disease and cancer.

The Power Plant in Niagara Falls was paid for by our taxes and uses our river to produce electricity yet sells the electricity off to other places far away at the detriment of the health of people living upstream.

Where is the justice for those who are made sick or who die in this convoluted energy production system?

First make all homes and businesses in WNY energy efficient. We should be conserving energy. We should be wasting less and recycling. We won't need more electricity if we are better at conserving it instead of wasting it. The wasteful use of resources is no different than wasting human lives in this case.

Second if New York State hydro energy production authorities continue to act like big three automobile producers and live the gas guzzler status and the vida loco, ceo model they should be abolished or come under the authority of the people.

Third WNY citizen energy production should be publicly funded from the profits made by the Niagara Power Authority and plowed back into solar roof top installations on private homes. This would be a step in turning off the polluting Huntley Plant and the spread of disease in Tonawanda and WNY. What would you rather see for your family higher energy bills and more cancer and respiratory illness in our community? Or do you want this money to be spent to bail out Bass Pro?

It is time to point the finger at the Niagara Power Authority and call them out for not providing electricity to Buffalo on the cheap or by them not funding cleaner energy production locally. The Huntley coal plant is a tumor on the body of WNY.

[Mark]

There is no leadership from either the political community, the mayor won't take a stand on anything or the organizations that represent business interests. Instead there is a phobia that downstate is out to get upstate. Instead of standing with the tin cup out, perhaps a dialogue could be established with this new appointee. Seems like Brian Higgins is the only one who is willing to think out of the box when dealing with the entrenched authorities. After all he was the one that got the way the power was divided out changed.