Photo Gallery: Fixtures
| Oh the times we live in; how fast they become history! For nearly four decades of my life, LILCO (Long Island Lighting COrporation) was one of my metropolitan region's Big 3 utilities, together with Con(solidated) Edison and Brooklyn Union Gas and Electric. Hell, I even owned LILCO's stock at one point, and it wasn't a bad investment. Nukes eventually did LILCO in, as community opposition to a planned nuke plant at Shoreham, Long Island, and the costs attendant to its decommisioning, nearly drove LILCO into insolvency. Finally, a couple of years shy of the new millenium, on the pretext of saving Long Islanders from LILCO's onerous rates, heretofore needed to cover the utility's heavy debt load, the newly commisioned Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) took LILCO over, scattering a few leftover bones to Keyspan Energy, the new overlord of the equally gobbled Brooklyn Union. Today, though Brooklyn lost its Union, it gained a minor league baseball franchise that plays in, of all things, a new Coney Island stadium called Keyspan Park. As for LILCO, all that remains are ghosts such as this Jericho Turnpike manhole cover in Floral Park. As for LILCO's hard pressed rate payers; they aren't really any better off under the public authority, but then again, did nay of them really expect to be? Shot July 7th, 2001. |