Pol: LI won't get share of upstate power

A high-ranking upstate senator came back swinging at a Long Island lawmaker's proposal to allocate a share of cheap hydropower from an upstate Niagara power plant for downstate constituents.

"I will defeat this effort, even if I have to clip the extension cord to Long Island personally," State Senate Energy and Communications Committee chairman Sen. George Maziarz (R, C-Newfane) said in a statement Thursday in response to a bill by Assemb. Alfred Graf (R-Holbrook).

Graf's bill, introduced last month, seeks to eliminate a portion of state law that precludes LIPA from buying "preference" hydropower from the plant, which costs about a ninth of what the Long Island Power Authority pays for wholesale power.

The decade-old language was a concession to upstate lawmakers to win their support for the law that created LIPA.

Maziarz blasted Graf's bill as "the latest in a long line of attempts to hijack Western New York hydropower and ship it downstate."

Graf said he was unswayed by Maziarz's threats. "I'm an ex-Brooklyn cop," he said. "I don't back down on anything."

He called on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to weigh in on the matter.

Graf, a first-term assemblyman, said he has communicated with the New York Power Authority about his proposed law and received positive feedback. The authority operates the 2,400-megawatt Niagara plant, the state's largest.

In an Aug. 17 email from a NYPA staffer shown to Newsday, Graf was told "the concept of 'transporting hydroelectric power from Niagara to Long Island' is one that is just starting to be looked at in a very preliminary way by the potential partners: NYPA, LIPA, ConEd and National Grid."

However, in a statement Friday, NYPA said: " . . . there have never been and there are no plans to reallocate any of that preference power to Long Island. That topic in the email was not based on any substance or fact." Some of that power already goes to Long Island municipal utilities in Rockville Centre, Freeport and Greenport.

LIPA spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter said the authority "is in support of any opportunity to diversify our portfolio and have access to additional low-cost power for the benefit of our customers."

State Sen. Kenneth LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) said although he supports cheaper power and a broader discussion of how to achieve it, he doesn't believe the bill has a chance of passing.