Executive Speeches

Remarks of Timothy S. Carey, president and chief executive officer of the New York Power Authority, at the President's Roundtable Breakfast, SUNY Cobleskill, Cobleskill, New York

March 30, 2006

Thank you, President Haas.  Good morning, everyone.

Steve Ramsey, whom many of you know, told me how, a few years ago, the beautiful rolling hills surrounding our plant were used to reenact Civil War battles.

I had visions of musket balls whizzing past our engineers.  And mortars laying siege to our reservoirs.

Certainly, the name Blenheim-Gilboa rouses a few martial memories.  The Battle of Blenheim was where the Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill’s ancestor, won the day in the War of the Spanish Succession.  And as we all know from our Bible, the Battle of Gilboa, fought between the Israelites and the Philistines, was where King Saul was slain, leading to the reign of King David.

Having said all that, I want you to know that I come in peace.  I come to discuss not civil war but civil life and what that means to a large state-owned public utility.

When I joined the Power Authority Trustees a number of years ago, Governor Pataki used a word that suggests not only civil life but civil engineering.  The word was “stewardship.”

In the Bible, stewardship of the land is a moral imperative.  It derives from man's duty to cherish God's creation.

In the eyes of the surrounding community, however, stewardship goes hand in hand with being a good neighbor.

It is plain enough that you’ve been a good neighbor to us.  You have been overly gracious, in fact.  Not many communities would welcome the presence of the state’s largest electric storage system in what is, effectively, your own backyard.  And such a beautiful back yard, to boot.

“Welcome” may be too strong a word.  But the point is this.  You’ve been good to us.  And that’s helped us enormously in carrying out our public purpose.

So, I wanted to begin my remarks by saying – and meaning – thank you.  I feel a deep sense of gratitude to this community.  You are our neighbors and our friends.  You are our partners in this strange and endlessly fascinating enterprise called the State of New York.

As you know, the Power Authority’s mission includes lowering rates for all New Yorkers.  And our plant does that by supplementing the supply of electricity during peak periods.  In doing that, it helps keep electric rates from sky-rocketing.  It helps forestall blackouts during periods of high demand.  And it helps avoid the construction of plants that burn fossil fuels.

I think of it as a kind of perpetual motion machine.  Engineers pump the water up to a reservoir on top of a mountain and then generate electricity when the water flows back down.  It’s a wonder of nature unto itself – generating over a million kilowatts of clean, reliable electricity with just the gravity of falling water.  And yet it took considerable effort, capital and planning to build.  And it takes considerable effort to maintain.

We don’t take any of that for granted.  And we don’t take the community for granted, either.

I wanted to point out, however, that one cannot draw a very fine distinction between the Power Authority and the community.

Diana Jaegar, a secretary at our plant, impressed this upon me recently. She said, “Didn’t you know that Dennis Richards, the plant’s fire, health and safety administrator, is also the Town Supervisor in Middleburgh and a longstanding member of the Schoharie Country Board of Supervisors?”   She then mentioned Lynn Haitt, who’s the Town Justice in Jefferson.  And Cindy Buel, who sits on the Gilboa Planning Board and Roy Bower, who spends his off hours as a youth coach in Jefferson. And Steve Ramsey who sits on the Board of the SUNY Cobleskill Foundation, advises at the County Red Cross and holds forth on a key committee at the Schoharie County Chamber of Commerce.  Let me also mention Steve Wyckoff, Gene Rosa and Roger Gural, who volunteer as firemen in their home towns.  Roger also sits on the Town Board in Summit.  And Gene is the fire chief in Margarettville.

To take liberties with the words of Pogo, “We’ve seen the community and it is us.”

Indeed,  I was deeply impressed by the intricate web that exists between Power Authority employees and the surrounding community.

There is no one managing this web, as there is on the Internet.  No so-called web master.  This web is simply a natural evolution of the ties that bind us all.

Another web exists between the Power Authority and the State Government.  And in that case there is a web master.  His name is  Governor Pataki.  He’s the man we elected to lead us.  And he’s done a brilliant job.  And the reason, again, is that word I mentioned earlier.  “Stewardship.”

Governor Pataki’s legacy will be sharply remembered as one of careful stewardship of the state’s priceless assets – its air, land and water.  Without question, he’s the most environmentally-friendly governor in the country, in the grand tradition of another great New York Governor, Theodore Roosevelt.

This didn’t happen by putting his finger in the wind to see which way it was blowing.  It was a matter of deep personal commitment.

George’s grandfather had a small farm in Peekskill that provided most of the fresh vegetables for the townsfolk.  George used to work the soil.  He even built little tents over the tomato plants to protect them from the cold.

One summer, George thought he’d try his hand at some other kind of work.  He shoveled coal into the furnaces at the Fleishman’s Yeast plant in Peekskill.  It was an experience he never forgot.  One of the first things he did as governor was to replace all the coal boilers in all of the public schools in the state with clean efficient boilers.  This wasn’t a vote getter.  It was a matter of personal commitment and high principle.  Because George Pataki, knew, first hand, the dangers that coal smoke poses to children.

It is hardly a surprise that Governor Pataki has taken such a strong interest in the Power Authority.  He sees us as an agent to help clean the air and improve the environment.  I take that part of my job very seriously and it's only because I try to push myself as hard as he pushes himself that I’m able to hold my head high.

I am just beginning to understand how this web I spoke of earlier has been a diabolical trap set for me by destiny.  Because I stand before you not as a stranger but as someone who knows this land and the people in these parts intimately.  Senator Seward and I go back 20 years or more.  I also have family here.  My cousin has a 12-acre farm just a stone’s throw from our plant and I have spent many hours hunting on his land.  My dog trainer, Brian Ericson, also lives right up on the hill overlooking the plant and is always available to give my dog pointers.

When I first came up here as a young man, I had only a vague idea of what went on at the B-G Plant.  But I was always impressed by how it was nestled unobtrusively into the landscape.  Like many of you, I have fished its reservoirs and hiked on the trails surrounding the plant.  After a while, I forgot that it was a power plant and came to think of it almost as an outdoor preserve.

That’s why I was so delighted to learn how neatly SUNY Cobleskill is woven into this web.

For example, last year we made a $20,000 grant to SUNY Cobleskill to build ponds for its outstanding fish hatchery and aquaculture program.  Now get this.  The walleye that are cultivated in those ponds eventually find their way into the reservoirs at our plant, joining our large schools of rainbow trout and beckoning fisherman from around the country.  How’s that for a symbiotic relationship?

I should mention that our restocking needs are likely to increase.  Later this year, we’ll begin a four-year, $135 million life extension and modernization program at Blenheim-Gilboa.

This will ensure the project’s efficient operation for many years to come.  But it will also require us to lower the water level in the upper reservoir each fall until the program is complete. So there’s a pretty good chance we’ll lose some fish.

Their eminent replacements will come from the fish ponds here.  And so by helping SUNY Cobleskill, we’re also helping ourselves and the sportsmen and sportswomen who fish our reservoirs.

I appreciate the help of Professor Mark Cornwell from SUNY Cobleskill and the Schoharie County Conservation Association in developing this initiative and others over the years that have helped make this region a veritable angler’s and hiker’s paradise.

Another web-like initiative was when the university helped us provide nesting sites for eastern bluebirds on our plant grounds – an effort that evolved into a formal program that received a special honor last year from the National Wildlife Habitat Council.

We’ve also worked on several energy projects with SUNY Cobleskill.  We worked with your engineers to improve energy efficiency on the campus and we’re currently jointly involved in studying the potential of animal waste digestion and biomass gasification as clean, renewable power sources for the college.  So, stay tuned.

SUNY Cobleskill is also part of that community web that I spoke of earlier. For example, I was delighted to learn that SUNY Cobleskill grants associates’ degrees – as well as bachelors’ degrees – because I’m something of a volunteer myself.  My passion is community colleges.  I sit on the board at Westchester Community College in my home county and I am amazed at the good that institution has wrought in improving the lives of those eager students lacking the funds to attend a four-year college.

Recently, I was thumbing through a copy of Forbes magazine and read one the columns.  The columnist said that the price of a college degree had risen to such heights that he seriously doubted that it would pay for itself over the long run.

That may be true at many colleges.  But not, I suspect, at community colleges.

I was, therefore, very impressed by the over 40 programs of study at the associates’ level here at Cobleskill.  Everything from Animal Science to Telecommunications Management.  SUNY Cobleskill also has articulation agreements with a great many community colleges throughout the state assuring that credits earned at the associates’ level at another school are transferable to SUNY Cobleskill.  President Haas, you’re a man after my own heart.

My point is this.  Schoharie County doesn’t just provide us the ideal topography for a pumped-storage facility.  It also sustains us with its ideas, its talent and above all its community.

We coexist by webs of interdependency.  And while Civil War may rage from time to time in playful re-engagement on our grounds, civility will always reign in our hearts and in our minds. We recognize that we are weaved into this thing together.  We are the warp and woof of a grand tapestry that’s never finished – the great, State of  New York.

Thank you.