A Power Pictorial
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1. Did you know that the power generated by Niagara Falls helps provide some of the least expensive electricity anywhere? But not for us!
2. Brian Higgins: NYPA and NYS have taken over $1 billion from the Niagara Power Project to fund operations elsewhere. In 2008, alone, NYPA had a surplus of $309 million, 76 percent ($236 million) of which came from the Niagara. Only 14 per cent of the economic benefit from the Niagara Power Project remains in WNY.
3. Said another way, Albany exports 86 percent of the benefits of our hydropower out of the region.
4. Search around the globe. You won't find another instance of a place where they generate billions of dollars worth of an essential commodity such as electricity and the locals don't get that commodity inexpensively.
5. According to Electric Power Monthly, 98 percent of the nation pays less for electricity than the people of Niagara County. Twenty-five percent of the nation pays less than half that.
6. Why are we paying 44 percent more for electricity than residents of Sarasota, Florida which has neither the advantage of a natural power source nor the disadvantage of high heating bills?
7. According to Compton's Encyclopedia, in 1956, the year before NYPA took over control of the region's hydropower, "Water power helped build the [prosperous] city of Niagara Falls ...The falling of water provides a great and constant source of power for hydro-electric plants which supply the city and surrounding area [with] abundant and cheap electrical power." In 2014, the people who have the greatest natural hydropower in the world have neither control, nor use of that power, nor inexpensive electricity.
8. Many think that because the NYPA power plants are here and that NYPA offers free tours of the power vista and free parking for waterfowl observation, that NYPA is providing electricity for them too. Wrong!
9. Niagara residents get their power from burning coal and other methods, purchased from National Grid. We buy expensive electricity from the British while NYPA sells our locally produced, inexpensive hydropower to New York City.
10. A region must benefit from its local, natural advantages, just as it must pay for its disadvantages.