SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Will LIPA Be "Municipalized"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“This Legislative Commission on the Future of LIPA is tremendous and is the first step in establishing true public power for Long Islanders,” said State Senator Jim Gaughran of Northport about the inclusion in the new state budget of creation of a commission that will perform a study that could lead to the Long Island Power Authority becoming a full public utility.  

“For-profit billion-dollar companies running the electric grid guarantee Long Islanders two things: the highest electrical bills in the nation and unreliable service,” said Gaughran, the prime sponsor of the measure establishing the commission. 

“Nothing short of a triumph for Long Islanders,” declared State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor, the prime sponsor of the measure in the Assembly.

The budget for the state’s 2022-2023 fiscal year, approved two weeks ago by the state legislature and promptly signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, establishes an eight-member panel that would perform the study that could lead to LIPA being “municipalized.”  

Its members will be appointed by the legislative leaders of both parties in both the State Assembly and State Senate. Guiding and assisting the commission will be an advisory committee of area “stakeholders”—a wide variety including representatives of business, labor, local governments, environmental groups, Native American tribes, educators and those involved in social justice issues.

The commission’s work can “serve as a path toward fully realizing what LIPA should have always been: a public power authority responsible to the customers it serves,” said Thiele.

“For more than 25 years, ratepayers have been routinely failed by a third-party management model” that LIPA has used—hiring private utilities to run the Long Island electric grid. This “historic” move, said Thiele, “gives motion to the actions necessary to implement a municipalized model that’s transparent and accountable.”

Governor Hochul’s working with Thiele, an Independent and previously a Republican, and Gaughran, a Democrat, in creation of the commission and its study mission was a far contrast from the behavior of her predecessor as governor, Andrew Cuomo.

It was Cuomo who foisted a New Jersey-based utility, PSEG, onto Long Island as the most recent company running the Long Island electric grid for LIPA. It replaced National Grid which Cuomo decried for its performance during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

There will be opposition no doubt involving PSEG to what could now happen. 

The utility from Newark has prized its expansion onto Long Island.

The original vision decades ago by those who crusaded for founding LIPA was for it to operate the Long Island electric grid—and also to run democratically with members of its board elected by Long Islanders. A model was the Sacramento Municipal Utility District which then and now operates the electric grid in a large chunk of California and has an elected board. But Andrew Cuomo’s father, former Governor Mario Cuomo, cancelled having elections for LIPA board members, and his successor, George Pataki, formalized elimination of elections and instead appointments mostly by the governor and also legislative leaders. 

The Legislative Commission that will be set up will now consider “the method of governance” of LIPA. A return to the concept of democratic governance could be proposed.

It will also consider “improved transparency, accountability and public liability” and how there could be “improved reliability of the system.” National Grid’s terrible Superstorm Sandy performance was followed in 2020 by PSEG’s miserable performance in Superstorm Isaiah when 646,000 outages occurred. The panel will consider “improved storm response.”

And, it will, among other things, look at “increased reliance on renewable energy sources to produce electricity.” PSEG has been claiming in what a recent article by Mark Harrington in Newsday noted as $1.1 million “on self-promotion” since December that it’s “working on a cleaner more sustainable future.” But PSEG is, in fact, a big nuclear utility. It operates the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power plants in New Jersey and is part-owner of the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. 

Another original vision for LIPA was for it to have a commitment to safe, renewable, green energy. That came in the wake of the now defunct Long Island Lighting Company seeking to build seven to eleven nuclear power plants on Long Island. Shoreham was the first to be completed but was shut down and decommissioned as a nuclear facility in the face of public and governmental opposition and formation of LIPA to replace LILCO. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP- Is peace possible? Is War Part Of The Human Condition?

By Karl Grossman

Is peace possible?  Or is war a never-ending part of the human condition?

For 20 years, from Suffolk County I would regularly to go to the United Nations in New York for meetings as a charter member of the Commission on Disarmament Education, Conflict Resolution and Peace sponsored by the UN and the International Association of University Presidents. 

 At the entrance of the UN, one passes its garden with a collection of statues donated by member nations, including one of a man with a hammer beating a sword into a plowshare, as Isaiah urges in the Bible. There’s also a statue of a giant pistol, its barrel knotted so no bullet can be fired. 

The president of the SUNY/College at Old Westbury where I’m a professor, L. Eudora Pettigrew, who was the commission’s chair, asked me to be a member. Like the UN itself, it had diverse membership—people from all over the world. This included leaders of peace organizations, academics, and also, interestingly, several military representatives

A central part of the commission’s work was conflict resolution—the name for an area of intense study and development in the last several decades—focusing on how conflicts can be resolved through peaceful methods and settlements arrived at. Conflict resolution theory has many applications including for schools, businesses and nations.

The commission was an initiative for peace with which I was thrilled to be involved. But in the last two months, what it strove for has been challenged by the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, the savagery, the extreme violence of Putin’s onslaught, the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians and the decimation of a neighboring country. Only last week came news of the ghastly atrocities committed by the Russian forces. 

Not only did I regularly travel to the UN but I journeyed globally on the commission’s behalf. This included going to China where I coordinated a panel at the World Conference on Women about women and children being main victims of war. In Norway I gave a presentation on the threat of nuclear-powered weapons being placed in space based on a book I wrote, Weapons in Space. I helped run a program in Japan in which our peace studies course module was unveiled to hundreds of college and university professors, deans and presidents. Its main author was commission member Dr. Victor Sidel, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

I gave presentations in Thailand, in Mexico, and at the UN. On Long Island, I ran conferences for the commission at SUNY/Old Westbury. 

My wife, Janet, who taught at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor, would tell me about conflict resolution techniques being used at the school. At the UN many of those involved in peacekeeping weren’t well informed about conflict resolution methods in schools, I found, and, likewise, the activities of the UN “Blue Helmet” folks didn’t seem to be related in school programs. So, I coordinated having several hundred high school teachers and advisers from Long Island and the city join with UN peacekeeping personnel for a two-and-a-half day conference at SUNY/Old Westbury and the UN to share their work. For lead-off speaker, I arranged to have Stephen P. Marks of Southampton, long involved in UN peacekeeping work, just back from Cambodia and writing a new constitution to bring democracy and peace to a nation that had been through the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge and slaughter of 1.5 to 2 million people or more. 

The commission also held yearly retreats bringing people on opposing sides from hotspots around the world for two weeks together to foster person-to-person communication and trust-building, keys to conflict resolution.

Linda Pentz Gunter of the organization Beyond Nuclear penned an article before the Russian army moved on to nuclear power plant sites in Ukraine, one of which it shelled. She predicted “Ukraine’s nuclear plants could find themselves literally in the line of fire” and wrote about “the misguided megalomaniacs who run far too many countries in this world” and their “war-mongering.” She said the mix of war and nuclear power is another reason “we must stop using nuclear power.” The “reality is that we are a warlike species,” she noted. “Nothing in our history suggests we are evolving on this front, even if most of us abhor war.”

Peace is possible—but takes a lot of work, understanding and a new direction for humanity on a planet in which a form of mass murder called war has long been practiced.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Putin And Hitler "Tyrants"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

It began a while back in connection with my moderating a panel in Suffolk, at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, titled “Freedom from Tyranny: An American Woman’s Struggles and Triumphs to Save Soviet Jewry.” That woman was Lillian Hoffman and the event—which included an exhibit featuring copies of the Congressional Record citing her work and successes as well as posters, letters, films and books—was organized by her daughter, Sheila Bialek of Sagaponack.

On the panel was Peter M.F. Sichel who had a vacation home in East Hampton and is a friend of Sheila and her husband, Al. 

Sichel has had quite a life: he has been called the “Jewish James Bond.” 

He and his family escaped from Germany amid the Nazi horrors and came to New York. Sichel enlisted in the U.S. Army the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. With his fluency in German and background in Europe, he was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, the military’s intelligence agency during the war, rising to the rank of captain. A main job was arranging for German POWs who were not Nazis to go back behind enemy lines as spies.  

When the Central Intelligence Agency was established after the war, he became chief of the CIA base in Berlin. He remained with the CIA until 1959. Not only was he well-familiar with Germany but he has deep knowledge of Russia because of his Cold War intelligence work.

Ms. Bialek arranged for me to interview Sichel for a TV program before the panel program. After the shoot, Sichel and I chatted. He mentioned that in interrogations by U.S. military officers and intelligence agents, members of the German General Staff said they would have overthrown Hitler if the German army had been opposed when the Nazi dictator, in his first big act of aggression, ordered 20,000 troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936. He said France and Great Britain didn’t mount a challenge even though the move was in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles and even though the French had a large army. And, there was the British government’s policy of appeasement then. 

What an enormously important part of history, I thought.

In recent weeks, following the invasion of Ukraine, led by another dictator, Vladimir Putin, I got back in touch with Sichel to expand on what he told me earlier. In a set of interviews, Sichel enlarged on how many on the German General Staff “hated Hitler,” looked down at his status as a corporal in World War I. Moreover, “the General Staff told him that they could not face the French. They did not have the means—the troops and the armaments—to do this.” Sending the German army into the Rhineland became a “gamble of Hitler’s and he was successful” because there was no opposition.   

I did research and found a variety of historians have also said that strong military action by the French and British to oppose the German move was a moment in time when Hitler could have ended up removed. William L. Shirer in his comprehensive 1960 book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany, quotes the testimony at the Nuremberg Tribunal of Alfred Jodl, chief through the war of the Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, that: “Considering the situation we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces.” Shirer writes that the French army “could have” done this, and “had it, that almost certainly would have been the end of Hitler, after which history might have taken quite a different and brighter turn than it did, for the dictator could never have survived such a fiasco.”

Wrote Shirer: “In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact…bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip by.”

Sichel says of the savage invasion of Ukraine: “Terrible! Terrible!” A comparison with the invasion of the Rhineland as to response is “very complicated,” he said, mainly because of the nuclear weaponry possessed by Russia. However, the rising Russian military death toll will, he anticipates, have an impact on the Russian people. When the “body bags came back from Afghanistan, it was the Russian mothers who forced” an end to that Russian war. Further, with “the public involved” in protesting in Russia, if the number of people “willing to face up to the brutality of the police” grows, that will matter. And the Russian army “is not very strong,” says Sichel. Meanwhile, the sanctions are taking a great economic toll on Russia.

As was the situation with Nazi Germany, says Sichel, also at the center is a “tyrant.” 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Nissequogue River State Park Master Plan Draft To Be Released In June

By Stacey Altherr

Photos courtesy of “Long Island State Parks.”

Plan on seeing some more public meetings this summer on the redevelopment of Nissequogue River State Park after its master plan and environmental impact statement drafts are scheduled to be released in June, according to state parks officials.

Well into the second phase of planning, with design teams refining earlier concepts with more detailed descriptions of projects for the park, the drafts will produce another public comment period, which will be a minimum of 30 days, after the release.

The Master Plan is a set of recommendations that will set in place the plans for the park; from trails to concessions. Officials from New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation say that the master plan and EIS will incorporate much of what community members asked for during the public meeting over the past few years.

In addition, as part of the EIS process, a draft scoping document that was originally released December 8^th,  and garnered public input, will become a final scoping document also released in a next few weeks. That document takes into consideration the environmental impact of the potential Master Plan actions, said state officials.

“It is critical to note that public comments on the draft scoping document, as well as each of the hundreds of comments received throughout all the community engagements, have directly informed and shaped all the actions and steps being considered in the action plan,” said George Gorman Jr., regional director of state parks.

In the public comment summary portion of the Master Plan draft, the wide community net garnered requests for all types of recreational activities, such as tennis/pickleball courts, sledding, pools, golf course, equestrian stables, children playgrounds, sensory and community gardens, theater(s), and eateries.

However, having walking, running and equestrian trails, along with some type of boating recreation, was top of the list of requests. The area is well known for its bird watching, as well.

Some commenters asked that the natural beauty of the park not be disturbed by too much construction to accommodate some of the recreational facilities. State officials say they are aware of that, as well, noting that the trail system is a critical piece of the plan, as well as indoor and outdoor performance spaces. 

“NRSP’s identity is intimately tied to its inherent natural beauty, and to its history of engaging with and observing nature as part of the healing process…. Our team’s environmental consultant has conducted an extremely thorough inventory of the site’s existing ecological communities, and this map underlies all the design work,” said state park officials.

The massive waterfront park, which sits on 522 acres, is the site of the former Kings Park Psychiatric Hospital which was once the home of one of the largest mental health institutions in the country. The hospital closed in 1996, and over the decades became a nuisance for local authorities when the decaying structures became a place for trespassers and vandals. 

Groups of community members and legislators petitioned the state to designate it official parkland in perpetuity. In 2000, then Governor George Pataki signed a law making 153 acres into a state park. On the last day of his administration in 2007, he transferred the rest of the Kings Park property into the already established Nisseguogue River State Park.

Since then, the park has been used passively by community members, and security has been enforced. Because of its size and environmental sensitivity, the design of a state-of-the-art park design has been in the process for years, including studies, public meetings and surveys, although some buildings have been demolished for safety reasons.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - A New Cold Was Has Suddenly Arrived

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

A new Cold War has suddenly arrived. 

And as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could lead to a hot nuclear war. Guterres declared that Putin’s “raising the alert level of Russian nuclear forces is a bone-chilling development. The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.”

I spent much time last year completing a book, co-authored with historian Christopher Verga, titled Cold War Long Island. 

I thought I was writing about the past.

Still, in 2020 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its “Doomsday Clock” at 100 seconds to midnight with it defining midnight as “nuclear annihilation.” This was the closest to midnight since the clock was set at since it was created in 1947. It was kept at 100 seconds to midnight last year and again this year. “U.S. relations with Russia and China remain tense, with all three countries engaged in an array of nuclear modernization and expansion efforts,” said The Bulletin in January 2022.

And then on February 24^th Russia invaded Ukraine. 

Cold War Long Island was published in October 2021. Dr. Verga who teaches Long Island history at Suffolk County Community College and whose book World War II Long Island: Homefront in Nassau and Suffolk came out in 2021, asked me to co-author the successor volume. This was because, several decades older than he, I lived through, and as a journalist covered, various Cold War happenings on Long Island.

Indeed, as an elementary school student at P.S. 136 in Queens, I and the other pupils were issued dog tags to wear around our necks and were led in “duck-and-cover” exercises—ducking under our desks—regularly at school. The specter of nuclear war hung over our heads. 

As a journalist, I covered the U.S. Army and Air Force having established nuclear-tipped Nike Hercules and BOMARC missile bases on Long Island. The plan: to fire the missiles at formations of Soviet bombers feared heading to New York City, detonating their nuclear tips which had the power and more so of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and blow the formations out of the sky. Much of the resulting radioactivity could fall out on Long Island—but in the Cold War period this wasn’t considered a big worry by the military.

I covered the case of Soviet spy Robert Glenn Thompson, interviewing him after his arrest and then guilty plea. Thompson, of Bay Shore, ran a fuel oil business in Babylon and otherwise conducted espionage for the Soviet Union. He gathered information about prospective targets in the New York Metro Area. This included taking photos which he passed on to his Soviet contacts. Previously he was in the Air Force working in an intelligence office in Berlin. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison but was released in a spy exchange after 13 years.

There was more including writing about the original mission of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center just off Long Island. Newsday investigative reporter John McDonald nailed this by obtaining through the Freedom of Information Act documents that told how, as he wrote, “A 1950s military plan to cripple the Soviet economy by killing horses, cattle and swine called for making biological warfare weapons out of exotic animal diseases at a Plum Island laboratory, now declassified army records reveal.” Facsimiles of documents were reprinted in Newsday including on its front page.

As for now, “The Impossible Suddenly Became Possible,” was the title of an article by Anne Applebaum appearing in this month’s issue of The Atlantic magazine. “Shifts that no one imagined two weeks ago are unfolding with incredible speed,” she related. “Few imagined that the Russian president’s sinister television appearances and brutal orders could alter, in just a few days, international perceptions of Russia.”

“Vladimir Putin’s paranoid ranting,” she continued, “has frightened even people who were lauding his ‘savvy’ just a few days ago. He is not, in fact, someone you can do business with (original italics), as so many in Berlin, Paris, London and Washington falsely believed; he is a cold-blooded dictator happy to murder hundreds of thousands of neighbors and impoverish his nation, if that’s what it takes to remain in power. However the war ends—and many scenarios are still imaginable—we already live in a world with fewer illusions.”

No one knows now the war will end. Will Russia’s brutal assault succeed or fail?

Either way, with Putin ruling Russia, at hand is a new Cold War, at least.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.