Published: November 20, 2008 01:49 am      

BUFFALO: Area leaders call for fair share of low-cost power

BUFFALO — The New York State Power Authority’s trustees held a rare Buffalo-based meeting Wednesday to lend a closer ear to the concerns of a beleaguered Western New York population and economy. The message sent by area leaders, including Lockport Mayor Michael Tucker, was clear: Let us have our local power.

“The economy is very uncertain right now. We’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Tucker said. “I believe that we, the residents of Western New York, deserve the great economic resource of cheap power.”

Richard M. Kessel, NYPA’s new president and CEO, on the job for a month, implemented new rules for the downtown Buffalo session, allowing members of the public speak directly to the trustees.

“I think having this meeting in Buffalo is an important step in recognizing our customers in Western and Upstate New York,” Kessel said. “We want the public to have an accessible outlet for their concerns.”

Tucker was among about a dozen Niagara and Erie county business and political leaders who spoke.

“The issue on everybody’s mind was cut-rate electricity and other incentives granted to some cities and nothing for others as part of a recent relicensing agreement for the authority’s Lewiston-based Niagara Power Project.

Tucker is chairman of the Eastern Niagara Public Power Alliance, which represents several other Niagara River communities.

He said, together with the Erie County-based Public Power Coalition, the group represents 400,000 residents.

North Tonawanda Mayor Larry Soos formed the PPC two years ago as negotiations were taking place; the group represents both Twin Cities, the Town of Tonawanda, Grand Island and Amherst.

Members of two coalitions have worked for years — before and after the deal was signed — to negotiate benefits in the form of cheap power, even traveling to Washington and lobbying representatives.

The new license was finally approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Sept. 1, 2007.

In late October, Kessel met to discuss settlement issues along with representatives of both groups, including Tucker, Soos and Lockport Town Supervisor Marc Smith. The groups have filed a joint legal challenge of the federal decision granting NYPA’s new license to operate the Lewiston plant.

“When they built the plant 50 years ago, the idea was that there was supposed to be economic development and low-cost energy to municipalities within 30 miles of the plant,” Soos said at the time. “We were affected just as much, if not more, than some of the other communities that were included.”

Tucker and Smith have both said they sense from Kessel a willingness to rethink the NYPA line.

Kessel gave further indication of that on Wednesday in addressing their concerns.

“There are a lot of issues ... as far as who’s to blame, who was part of the process, who wasn’t part of the process ... we are working on that,” Kessel said.

The Power Authority has about $280 million in profits this year to work with.

In general, Kessel stressed the need to improve the way the authority functions, find new sources of electricity in Canada, expand wind production in the Great Lakes and, most of all, unclog the “arteries” of the state’s power transmission infrastructure.