The Battle for Niagara Power
BROOKS, TOM
THE BATTLE FOR NIAGARA POWER Senate fight on control of new hydroelectric project is no honeymoon By Tom Brooks Two YEARS AGO, 124 private utility companies banded together to wage a campaign...
...which appeared in leading newspapers and magazines across the country...
...The two Democrats would probably agree, too, with their Republican Governor's statement that a bill favoring the State would be in line with a twenty-year tradition encompassing the thinking of Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover...
...Lehman, Roosevelt and Dewey all agree with the philosophy expressed by Moses before the Senate Public Works Committee: "As a conservative in every sense, I give you my considered conviction that any business interests or political party which attempt to hand over the Niagara to the five private utility companies, and the coal companies back of them, will not survive long in our state...
...4. The Lehman-Roosevelt bill, which also calls for New York State construction, ownership and operation of the project but insists on certain Congressional safeguards...
...While it is true that the State Public Utility Commission regulates retail rates, it cannot regulate wholesale rates...
...Their opening salvo was a full-page advertisement entitled "Will They Inherit Socialism...
...An Army Engineers report, which will be the basis for power construction at Niagara regardless of who owns or operates it, claims that the "Niagara River furnishes the greatest concentration of hydroelectric power potential in the United States...
...This type of advertising is intensified whenever Congressional action on Niagara power development seems imminent...
...The cost of public generation is figured at 2 mills per kilowatt hour...
...Before the recent Senate Public Works Committee hearings on Niagara...
...This, of course, would force the private utilities to lower their rates...
...Four major hills on the Niagara power project are now pending before the Senate Public Works Committee...
...They apparently feel that the FPC will let the State develop Niagara...
...Franklin Roosevelt once dubbed it the birch-rod in the closet, because it is a public yardstick for insuring competitive and progressively reduced power rates...
...the residential service rate in Niagara Falls was $8.78 for 500 kilowatts...
...In 1952 alone, the National Association of Electric Companies doled out $478 million for its campaign, a crusade indirectly financed by the taxpayer...
...For when public regulatory bodies compute the cost of producing electricity to set the rates for private utilities, they include the cost of advertising...
...3. The Case bill, which would alter a U.S.-Canadian treaty now in effect by transferring jurisdiction over Niagara resources from Congress to the Federal Power Commission...
...If a public agency develops it, low-cost electricity will be available in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and the New England states...
...president of the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, in testimony before the Joint Senate-House Committee on Public Works...
...manager of the Northwestern Rural Electric Cooperative Association, point- out that "a savings of 5 mills, which we could anticipate from Federal or Stale development of our power, would save our people $2 million annually by I960...
...But they are fighting against heavy odds...
...General Eleetric look a full page in the New York Times to announce that five privalc companies were ready and willing to do the job...
...Private companies could still charge prohibitive prices for the power they sell to REA cooperatives, municipalities and other public bodies...
...If they succeed, the immediate benefactor will be the Niagara Mohawk Power Company, the only private organization operating in the Niagara Frontier...
...Such a preference clause has appeared in every enactment involving public power since 1906...
...But Dewey is opposed to the Lehman-Roosevelt provisions granting preference to municipalities, other public bodies and cooperatives in acquiring rights to distribute Niagara power...
...know that the permanent control of a few key industries and services will give the Government the power to lake over just about everything...
...The Ives-Becker proposal has no such safeguard...
...THE BATTLE FOR NIAGARA POWER Senate fight on control of new hydroelectric project is no honeymoon By Tom Brooks Two YEARS AGO, 124 private utility companies banded together to wage a campaign against public power development-particularly the proposed Niagara Falls project...
...The Government estimates that the proposed $400-million Niagara hydroelectric, plant will average an annual output of 11.6 billion kilowatt hours...
...But it would cost private companies over 6 mills per kilowatt hour to produce electricity at Niagara, according to Earle Machold...
...The ad declared: "The people who plan and work for a socialistic U.S.A...
...One of the key industries that they're trying to take over is electric light and power...
...Power produced by New York State would be sold to private utilities with no guarantee that they would pass its low cost on to the consumer...
...No issue could be more conspicuous, dramatic and easily understandable...
...2. The Ives-Becker bill, which would give New York State authority over the resources without Congres-sionally specified safeguards...
...The utilities are principally motivated by a fear of competition...
...Downstate in the Bronx, which depends on steam-generated power, identical service cost $113.67 William C. Wenner...
...If the majority in Congress is aching to revive the old charge of privilege, economic royalism and bourbonism, this is the golden opportunity to do so...
...What this means to the consumer is dramatized in a Federal Power Commission fact sheet entitled "Typical Electric Bills...
...Since Robert Moses's appointment as chairman of the New York State Power Authority, the Dewey forces have seemed to favor the Case bill...
...The Lehman-Roosevelt bill also provides that the public authority build transmission lines where necessary to assure power at reasonable rates...
...Although this plan would give private companies many privileges, they nevertheless oppose all bills that call for State development of the project, and are plumping for passage of the Dondero bill at this session...
...But the manner in which Dewey plans to operate the project is suggested by the Ives-Becker bill, which differs from the Lehman-Roosevelt bill on the vital question of how electrical energy is to be distributed and marketed...
...The five companies chatter about 'free enterprise.' Granting New York's rights in Niagara to power and coal companies is not free enterprise...
...It is robbery...
...Representatives of REA cooperatives, the State Farm Bureau Federation, the Farmers Union, and CIO and AFL unions in New York and New England have banded together in the Northeast Electric Power Consumers Committee to fight for State development of Niagara...
...In 1952...
...If this is socialism," Dewey declared, "I will be glad to stand at the dock with my distinguished defendants...
...1. The Dondero bill, already passed by the House, which would give Niagara's resources to a private-utility combine...
...Across the river in Canada, the Hydroelectric Power Commission of Ontario charged S4.36 for the same service...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 23
