The Power Authority's history began with hydropower, and our first generating facility is the St. Lawrence-Franklin D. Roosevelt Power Project, located on New York's border with Canada. We began producing hydroelectricity here in 1958, the result of a cooperative effort between the U.S. and Canada. Adjacent to our project is Ontario Power Generation's Robert H. Saunders Generating Station, which shares with us a power dam that stretches across the St. Lawrence River the length of 10 football fields. Along the way, river water pours into the power dam's intakes and falls about 80 feet into the spiral-shaped scroll case encircling each turbine. As this rushing water turns a turbine, an attached rotor spins inside a stator, a ring of tightly bound copper wires in a generator, creating an electric current.
Hydroelectricity is safe, clean, reliable and inexpensive.
More than half of the project's output supplies local industries that employ several thousand of New York's North Country residents. Our entire power project stretches over the St. Lawrence River Valley for 37 miles, within the Towns of Lisbon, Waddington, Louisville and Massena and the Village of Waddington. And we've built thousands of acres of parkland along the river for recreational enjoyment and wildlife preservation. A relicensing process , aimed at securing federal and state approvals to continue project operation, is now in full swing.