(WESTERN NEW YORK) - Leaders and Members of IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) Local 97 here in Western New York didn’t raise the white flag when a private development company announced plans to build a power transmission line from Quebec to supply the huge appetite for electrical consumers and businesses in New York City, bypassing their jurisdiction.

And they didn’t lose spirit when a former New York governor jumped on the importation bandwagon.

They got down to business.

Through a multi-pronged campaign of door-to-door education and lobbying, IBEW Local 97 - working in partnership with the State’s IBEW Utility Council (which represents 15,000 IBEW Members), has highlighted the danger to the State’s economic future and energy independence that would result from a short-sighted reliance upon imported power.

Now, even Governor Andrew Cuomo is heeding the campaign’s message.

IBEW Local 97 Business Representative Phil Wilcox, appointed to work full-time on the campaign, has worked to simplify complex issues, while educating the public and many State Legislators on the long-term power needs of New York State and Western New York, which supplies “downstream energy” to New York City.

A critical condition called “transmission congestion,” says Wilcox, has existed for decades in New York and is getting worse.  The congestion, he says is due to a combination of factors, but primarily aging transmission lines and the results of deregulation which divided entities that generate energy from those that are responsible for transmission.

Wilcox told The Dunkirk Observer: “Transmission owners no longer have any business reason to care about generation and generation companies are at the mercy of the transmission lines.”

IBEW Local 97 referenced a study done by the Brattle Group that projects up to 100,000 new jobs being created if the State’s New York State Power Authority - the largest non-profit utility in the U.S. - is given the support to upgrade its 60-year-old transmission line from Utica to points north, as well as New York-based transmission utilities from Utica and Albany south, to overcome congestion and better supply New York City.

The jobs saved would include those of workers at NRG Coal-Generated Power Plants, organized by Local 97.  NRG has invested $300 million in environmental improvements to keep the plants compliant with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Regulations.  Local 97 has made major concessions to keep the plants, which once employed 1,000 Workers, but have dwindled to 200 - on “life support,” says Wilcox.  

But an ill-conceived importation plan and a failure to upgrade State Transmission Lines could doom the facilities and the $460 million a year that Local 97’s research says they contribute to the local economy when combined with a third IBEW-organized facility in Western New York.

Hopes were lifted when Governor Cuomo announced in his 2012 State of the State Address, his intent to support a $2 billion New York State Electric Transmission Superhighway.  

The IBEW/New York State Utility Council stated: “The governor is to be commended for addressing an issue that has been neglected by previous administrations.”

While a piece of Cuomo’s plan involves buying power from Quebec, the Governor has underscored his support for continued generation at State Facilities, says Wilcox, who, in an op-ed in The Buffalo News, reported on the role of former New York Governor George Pataki, who is lobbying for the Canadian energy company.

“With knowledge of the State’s aged transmission lines and a hungry New York City customer, Pataki is throwing upstate generators under the bus for a buck, potentially destroying hundreds of jobs and devastating the tax base of local communities.  This exclusive cable from Canada will not allow any New York State Power Generation to compete, which will also set back renewable energy development in the State - bad news for our battered economy,” Wilcox said.

Local 97 and the IBEW Utility Council are making their voices heard as hearings are scheduled in the State Senate to consider whether to ask the utility regulators to approve Governor Cuomo’s plan or the 355-mile high-voltage, direct-current Champlain Hudson Power Express Inc., the transmission line proposed by Transmission Developers, Inc., which would run from Canada to the U.S. Border, then under Lake Champlain and the Hudson River into New York City.