Name the Next Blackout for Spitzer
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Not a few power plant operators must have choked on their Cheerios Monday morning reading what Attorney General Spitzer had to say about the blackout. In an interview with the New York Post, Mr. Spitzer laid blame for the blackout on the failed energy policies of the Pataki administration and launched one of the first salvos of the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, saying, “The deregulatory scheme of the last few years has led to a complete absence of strategic thinking and a failure to build either the necessary plants to produce energy or the capacity to move that energy around.” While Mr. Spitzer says he wants to see more power-generating capacity in New York State it’s hard to square such desires with Mr. Spitzer’s propensity over the last few years to hunt down anyone who so much as rubs two pieces of coal together. His commitment to power generation will be tested again today as the Bush administration clarifies environmental regulations to make it easier for power plants to perform routine maintenance and upgrades.
“We’re holding New York’s feet to the fire,” a spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, Darren Dopp, told The New York Sun this week, explaining why Mr. Spitzer has sued local power generators. And that’s not the half of it. Aside from going after some coal-burning power plants in western New York, Mr. Spitzer’s office has followed its nose to 19 power plants in the Midwest, suing them for air pollution that supposedly makes its way over to New York State, contributing to the phenomenon of acid rain. Mr. Spitzer has sued all of these plants and others out of state — and even more plants have been threatened with lawsuits — for not complying with a federal regulation called New Source Review. The rub of this regulation, as interpreted by the Clinton administration, is that when an old power plant upgrades its facilities and expands its generating capacity, it should have to comply with the newest and most stringent environmental rules. The problem with this is that the owners of aging power plants can save money and avoid this expensive compliance by muddling through with sub-par generating capacity and rickety equipment, leaving consumers with less power — not to mention more pollution per megawatt. The Bush administration today is set to restore the status quo ante Clinton, under which plants can install more efficient and less polluting turbines without being slammed by the feds or the Spitzers of the world; Mr. Spitzer has threatened to sue the administration over this move.
How does all of that square with Mr. Spitzer harboring a genuine concern for New Yorkers having enough power to run their air conditioners, computers, televisions, radios, hospitals, businesses, and factories? Mr. Spitzer’s spokesman claims that we don’t have to “trade off energy for the environment,” but, until we find a way to harness the power of environmentalists’ finger wagging, power and pristine won’t go hand in hand. At least Mr. Spitzer has not joined the chorus of those calling for the closing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. “The hole you would blow in our energy capability would be too great to sustain,” Mr. Dopp said. This puts Mr. Spitzer ahead of Mr. Pataki, who has wavered on Indian Point. But on the issue of New York’s power-transmission problems, as the governor pointed out yesterday, Mr. Spitzer has been missing in the fight to keep open Cross-Sound Cable under Long Island Sound, which Connecticut’s attorney general has closed down (for a brief period during the blackout, the federal government ordered it activated to help get Long Island back online). The solutions Mr. Spitzer’s spokesman put forward, streamlining power-plant siting and improving the network, are meaningless until people like the attorney general are ready to take a rational approach to environmental regulation and stop demonizing those who produce the power that keeps the lights on.