It's not quite in Dryden, but 50 years of Milliken Station, now AES Cayuga, seems worth noting. Despite the magic of the grid, it's reasonable to suspect that electricity generated there in Lansing may have been used in Dryden.
In county news, there's an article about library funding, as the library received $50,000 on top of its earlier budget request, but not the $338,000 it had requested. County Legislators Martha Robertson and Mike Lane both voted for the $50,000.
The editorial today takes a long look at increasing energy costs coming to Tompkins County this weekend. I very much appreciate the information as I'm putting storm windows on my house, but it's odd to see the editorial laid out in a much smaller type size than usual to accomodate the larger amount of text. There's some critical news in there, though:
The residential price for natural gas, once just $6.37 per 1,000 cubic feet in New York in early 2000 and $11.02 this January, has already spiked to $14.94. That's a 36 percent increase in less than eight months, and the DOE expects that price to jump more. Home heating oil, as low as $1.44 a gallon in New York at the outset of winter 2003-04, stood at $1.99 one year ago. Two weeks ago, the DOE predicted that price could top $2.94 a gallon, up more than 48 percent from one winter to the next.
I'm very glad my house is now insulated with an upgraded furnace, but I suspect my cash savings was temporary. Better to lose the savings than be paying massive new bills, though!
Posted by simon at October 6, 2005 5:21 PM in Ithaca Journal , energy , public finance