How About Changing Name of Niagara County to 'Stupid' Why Stop at Changing Robert Moses Parkway Name Only?

 

Since the Niagara County Legislature is discussing changing the name of the Robert Moses Parkway to the Niagara Scenic Parkway in order to more accurately describe the parkway itself for tourists coming into town, perhaps it is high time to discuss another name change, long overdue, that would more accurately describe the county for everyone who is considering living, seeing or (as they usually do) just plain outsmarting us.

May I be blunt?

I'd like to propose we change the name of our county from Niagara to Stupid.

Stupid County.

After all the shoe fits.

Where else could you find a county that produces billions of dollars' worth of a commodity that everybody uses – electricity - a commodity that once made them rich -- who signed their rights to it away for 50 years, exported it out of the county at cheap prices, then paid exorbitantly for the same commodity, descending during this time from prosperous to dead broke?

Who elect leaders who -- when their first, bankrupting, 50-year deal was up -- signed another 50-year deal? And finally, the embellishment: the dunce cap on the pinhead of the fool -- an apathetic, uninformed public?

They don't know, for instance, that the New York Power Authority (NYPA) -- a quasi-governmental, Albany-controlled, "public benefit" corporation, now in the eighth year of its second, 50-year license agreement to control the hydroelectric energy of the Niagara -- sells none of it to local residents.

Niagara hydropower goes to New York City and eight other states.

They don't know that -- as their inexpensive local hydropower crosses the state to enrich New York City, Rhode Island and New Jersey -- only two places in the USA pay more for electricity than the Niagara resident: New Hampshire and Hawaii.

According to Electric Power Monthly, 25 percent of the nation pays half or less than half of what Niagara Falls residents pay for electricity.

A bankrupt people who have the greatest hydroelectric power in the world, who neither get use of their locally produced hydropower nor get inexpensive electricity.

That’s pretty stupid.

One stupendous irony.

Hearken back then, my friends, to its genesis, to 1957, when NYPA Chairman Robert Moses told the people of this city how NYPA, if it had control of Niagara's hydropower, would ensure continued prosperity in this region.

A skillful liar, Moses, deceiving an innocent, trusting, prosperous people into the loss of their greatest asset, left a legacy of riches to ruin -- a saga, spanning three generations, of genuine pathos.

Look at this city now.

Those who are old enough to remember: Think og what the city was

It might be a story of innocent ruin, a people deceived by those elected to represent them, but it might also be aptly labeled “bizarrely comedic,” with a well-defined stooge: the people of Niagara Falls.

Consider: NYPA's license expired in 2007. The City, the region, could have fought to regain local control of our hydropower. Like we did when we were rich, when we were the world leader in hydropower production, when they called Niagara Falls the "Power City," when we had inexpensive, abundant electrical power and businesses (and jobs) came rushing here.

But, curiously, a group called the Niagara Power Coalition, comprised of appointed representatives of what some were pleased to call the Stupid Seven (S-7) -- Niagara Falls, Niagara County, the towns of Niagara and Lewiston, and the Niagara-Wheatfield, Lewiston-Porter and Niagara Falls school districts -- agreed to gift NYPA with another 50-year license, until 2057, in return for a proportional pittance: $233 million, paid over 50 years, and a tiny allocation of low-cost Niagara power, which some politicians of S-7 control and some Greenway money for parks and trails and let’s be candid – pork – utterly controlled by NYPA.

For a proportional pittance, S-7 relinquished, on behalf of current and future residents of this county, a billion-dollar-a-year asset (in today's dollars) in return for a seven-way split of $5 million annually, not factored for inflation.

It will be $5 million, split seven ways, 50 years from now.

Contrast that with what a billion dollars gross (and more than $230 million in net profit) of electricity per year in today's dollars will be worth 42 years from now, and you will realize that S-7 was named quite aptly.

Apparently, however, NYPA executives knew that ignorance (in Niagara) is bliss (for Albany). They knew they didn't have to sell Niagara hydropower to Niagara. The people here actually think they get their power from NYPA because NYPA power plants are here, offering free tours of the power vista and free parking for waterfowl observation.

Niagara residents, however, get their power from burning coal and other inefficient methods, purchased at high mark-up from a company owned by investors from England called National Grid.

Ironic, isn't it? As we buy expensive electricity from the Brits and help make the royal family wealthier, NYPA takes our inexpensive hydro-power and sells it to New York City and elsewhere at low rates.

Lamentably, the most common waterfowl, observed quietly by NYPA executives, are colorful gooses, living in homes throughout Niagara, paying high electric bills, unaware they are in a world-leading, electricity-producing region and getting none of it.

Still, even the moronic denizens here ought to comprehend that NYPA is controlled by Albany and swells rich with "patronage" jobs.

Instead of providing low-cost electricity for this region -- which would create thousands of well-paying local jobs -- the profits from our hydropower pay for thousands of high-paying "administrative" and "consultant" jobs, most of which are in White Plains (a suburb of New York City) and Albany.

Although S-7 leaders might disagree, we don't have to honor the foolish, locally bankrupting relicensing of NYPA. If we had half the gumption of the Seneca Indians, who burn tires and blockade roads if they perceive injustice, we could start a movement to take back our hydropower. We could start an action to condemn NYPA property based on the genuine theft of our natural asset, based entirely upon the deception originally perpetrated by Robert Moses: He said NYPA control of our hydro-power would prove a boon to Niagara.

It did not.

Albany simply and quietly stole the power from us. The fact that we lost control of a vital, billion-dollar-a-year asset, more, perhaps, than any other factor has impoverished us.

It is simple:  A region has to benefit from its natural assets, just as it has to pay for its natural liabilities and disadvantages. For example, we have to pay high heating bills in this region because it’s cold. So why are we paying 44 percent more for electricity than the average resident of Sarasota, Fla., which has neither the natural disadvantage of high heating bills nor the advantage of a natural power source?

Consider this: Niagara Falls lost its two greatest assets to Albany -- tourism (through Albany's "New York City-gets-all-the-profit" management of the state park) and the hydroelectric power theft.

Imagine what your life would be like if you were deprived of your two best assets, whatever they are. Whatever it is you do best in life, your two greatest shining talents, imagine what life would be like if someone took all the profit away from that.

Then imagine you didn't complain; were hardly aware of it.

Then you'll understand what happened in Niagara.

The stupefying, ultimate truth is this: There is no inexpensive electrical power for the people who live where electricity is generated. The people don't use their locally produced power, they don't know it, and, when they learn about it, they don't complain.

If we changed our name, they wouldn’t call us stupid for nothing.