There has been a lot of news made in the last few weeks so here is my take on some of the stories.

There has been a lot of talk about U.S. Rep. Elsie Stefanik’s future recently. It would be nice if we had a real governor from upstate New York and Stefanik would be my first choice as the next Republican candidate for the office. Currently the Siena College poll has incumbent Kathy Hochul comfortably ahead of possible Republican contenders like Stefanik but that is normal for incumbents who have done even worse jobs than Hochul has. So, keep in mind that election day 2026 is still 16 months in the future and anything can happen.

I believe that the election of someone with a strong national voice with a reputation as a fighter for conservative views like Stefanik is one of the surest ways of giving the Republican Party some relevance in state affairs.

It’s probably about time that the Fredonia Village Board contacted the Guinness Book of Records to see if six boil water orders in 30 months sets some sort of record that could be included in their record book. However, on second thought I don’t think that it’s the sort of record that you want to blow your horn over.

It’s also not something that anyone would want to deal with during the hottest days of summer when a drink of cool water, lemonade, or iced tea really hits the spot but can be a special pain when you first have to boil water for the beverage and boil more to make the ice to cool the drink.

I hesitated to take on this subject because I live in Silver Creek where our problems with water were solved some years ago, so I have no horse in this race as they say in Texas. However, the recurring problems with the Fredonia water supply should increase demand that the village connect to the North County Water District before there is a catastrophic breakdown of the water system or the ancient substandard dam lets go during a rainstorm. Doing anything else doesn’t make much sense.

Next, I see that a three judge appeals panel upheld a New York state law holding gun manufacturers liable when their weapons are used in deadly shootings. Based on that, it seems logical to me that the next time some nut drives their SUV up a sidewalk and kills and injures innocent people the car company should be liable. But that won’t happen in a state that turns criminals into victims.

It was anti-gun legislation like this that caused Remington Arms in Ilion to close its factory there in 2024. Remington, the country’s oldest gun maker founded by Eliphalet Remington, began making flintlock rifles in New York’s Mohawk Valley in 1816. The factory site in the village dates to 1828, with many of the current buildings constructed early in the 20th century. At one time it employed 1,000 workers that included several of my relatives, and as recently as a few years ago there were still seven hundred working at the plant. By the time the closing announcement was made, in November 2023 the number had dwindled to fewer than three hundred. 

In March 2024, the company announced it was moving to Georgia. Although production issues were given for the move the real reason for the move was that deeply blue New York has grown hostile to the firearms industry and anything connected to it.

Finally, a breath of common sense has wafted through the halls of power in Albany. Republican senators have told Hochul that in view of concerns about the stability of the power grid during the recent heat wave that she needs to declare an energy state of emergency and halt the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act mandates that are a lot of wishful thinking unencumbered by common sense. Even the governor has admitted that it is impossible to meet the goals of the CLCPA without hurting consumers.

All this has led to charges by environmental advocates that recent New York Independent System Operator reliability reports have misled the public and political leadership regarding the state’s continuing need for fossil fuel generation.

So, this is what I think. Having a totally zero emissions electric grid by 2040 is a pipe dream and in my opinion we won’t have one in 2070 or even by 2100 if we persist in wind and solar with Rube Goldberg-like storage battery contraptions. Goldberg was a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist famous during the first half of the last century noted for his cartoons of devices having a fantastically complicated improvised appearance, which are also impractical.

So the only way to get there is going the nuclear route. But to go nuclear means that the public needs to understand that nuclear no longer means the Three Mile Island partial meltdown, or the Chernobyl disaster but rather that it is a safe and efficient primary source of green electric power in France, Hungary, Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, South Korea, Sweden, Spain, and several other nations.

New York’s current headlong rush into untested wind and solar could lead us into an electrical dead end leaving New Yorkers living in the dark and cold.

That’s my take on the news this week.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident.