[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 14 (Tuesday, January 29, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E111-E112]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO CHARLES LUCE
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HON. NORMAN D. DICKS
of washington
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, as we look forward to considering
legislation in Congress this year to address our Nation's energy
shortage, it is my sad duty to announce that one of the real giants of
the energy business in the United States has passed away. Charles F.
Luce, the former chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Consolidated
Edison, died this past weekend at age 90 after a brief illness.
Starting as a meter reader for a power company when he was a
teenager, Chuck Luce rose to become a legend in the electric power
industry through an interesting career progression. Following his
clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Chuck Luce practiced
law in Walla Walla, Washington, for 15 years. In 1961, President John
F. Kennedy summoned him into public service as the Administrator of the
Bonneville Power Administration, which markets the power from the
Columbia River hydroelectric system in the Pacific Northwest. At BPA,
he was an enlightened leader who keenly understood federal energy
issues, pioneering many jurisdictional arrangements that established
the distribution of federal power resources in the Northwest, including
the Pacific Northwest-Pacific Southwest Intertie.
During the Johnson Administration, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall
brought him back to Washington to serve as Undersecretary of the
Interior Department, but his talents were quickly recognized and
summoned when Con-Ed, New York's largest utility, needed a steady hand
to confront looming problems of growth and supply. He led Con-Ed during
the toughest times that any American utility has faced in our Nation's
history, including the oil supply crisis of the 1970s and the infamous
New York City blackout in 1977. His leadership through those times of
crisis set an example of calm and focused action, and he is remembered
as one of the most effective and thoughtful leaders in an industry that
affects every American every day.
I want to take this opportunity, Madam Speaker, to insert into the
Record Mr. Luce's obituary, printed today in the New York Times, so
that Members can read the story of a truly legendary figure in the
history of electric power generation and transmission in the United
States.
[From the New York Times, Jan. 29, 2008]
Charles F. Luce, Ex-Chief of Con Ed, Is Dead at 90
(By Dennis Hevesi)
Charles F. Luce, the chairman and chief executive of
Consolidated Edison, the giant New York electric and gas
utility during some of its most difficult times, died
Saturday in Torrance, Calif. He was 90 and lived in
Bronxville, N.Y.
The cause was prostate cancer, said Joyce Hergenhan, a
former company spokeswoman.
Mr. Luce headed Con Ed from 1967 to 1982 and dealt with the
oil crisis of the 1970s, customer rage over rising rates, the
1977 blackout that paralyzed New York City and the settlement
of a decades-long struggle with environmental groups over
construction of a power plant at Storm King Mountain on the
Hudson River.
A liberal Democrat and an environmentalist, Mr. Luce did
not fit the standard profile of the big-business executive
when he agreed to leave his post as under secretary of the
interior in the Johnson administration to take over
Consolidated Edison.
``The metropolitan area's need for electric energy doubles
about every 15 years,'' Mr. Luce said then. ``To supply these
vast new quantities of energy at reasonable cost, but protect
the city's environment from pollution and unsightly
structures, is a king-size job.''
It became particularly difficult in 1973, when fuel prices
skyrocketed because of the Arab oil embargo, and Con Ed's
rates followed.
Facing customer protests, Mr. Luce chose to soften the
monthly billing blow by eliminating the company's April 1974
dividend. That prompted shareholder protests, and on May 24,
1974, Mr. Luce presided over a meeting at the old Commodore
Hotel on 42nd Street at which customers and shareholders
boisterously expressed their views.
A New York Times headline the next day said, ``Days of
Anxiety for the Man Who Saved a Watt.''
That was a reference to the ``Save-a-Watt'' program, which
Mr. Luce had instituted soon after taking over as Con Ed
chairman. It was a shift from the electricity industry's
traditional marketing strategy, succinctly expressed as
``Live better electrically.''
For 25 hours, starting on the evening of July 13, 1977, New
York City could not live electrically at all. Two lightning
strikes on major tie-lines in Westchester County led to the
collapse of the entire system.
Some Con Ed officials attributed the blackout to ``an act
of God.'' Although Mr. Luce did not utter the phrase himself,
he became associated with it.
He kept cool in the face of Mayor Abraham D. Beame's
accusations of ``gross negligence'' on the part of the
company, saying, ``Respectfully, I think he's wrong,'' and
calling for a fair review.
In the end, Con Ed had to concede that the systemwide
expansion of the power failure after the local lightning
strikes was largely its fault.
Four years before Mr. Luce became chairman, Con Ed had
started seeking approval from regulators to build a
hydroelectric plant on Storm King Mountain in Orange County,
55 miles north of New York City. Opposition to that plan and
to proposals for other power plants along the Hudson River
[[Page E112]]
was fierce and unrelenting for nearly 20 years.
Then, in December 1980, 11 environmental groups, Con Ed and
other utility companies reached what became known as the
Hudson River Peace Treaty. Mr. Luce had asked Russell E.
Train, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency,
to mediate the dispute.
Under the agreement, Con Ed abandoned efforts to build the
Storm King plant. In return, the environmental groups and the
federal Environmental Protection Agency dropped their demands
that Con Ed build six costly cooling towers to protect fish
from being sucked into power plants at Indian Point and
several other sites along the river. The agreement was widely
cited as a model for balancing economic and environmental
needs.
Charles Franklin Luce was born on Aug. 12, 1917, in
Platteville, WI, a son of James and Wilma Luce. His father
owned a furniture store and a mortuary.
As a teenager, Mr. Luce got some early exposure to the
utility business as a meter reader for the local power
company.
Mr. Luce earned a bachelor's degree and a law degree
through a five-year program at the University of Wisconsin in
1941, then received a master's degree in law at Yale in 1942.
Unable to enlist for military service in World War II
because of an attack of polio, Mr. Luce became a staff lawyer
for the Board of Economic Warfare in Washington.
A year later, on the recommendation of a professor at Yale,
he was chosen as a law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black of the
Supreme Court.
For 15 years after World War II, Mr. Luce practiced law in
Walla Walla, Washington.
Then, in 1961, President Kennedy chose him to head the
Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from the
Grand Coulee Dam and more than 20 other federal hydroelectric
plants in the Columbia River Basin.
Mr. Luce also worked with Interior Secretary Stewart L.
Udall in creating the Pacific Northwest-Pacific Southwest
Intertie, a vast power transmission complex. He negotiated a
1964 treaty with Canada for joint hydroelectric development
of the Columbia River.
At Mr. Udall's request, President Johnson appointed Mr.
Luce as under secretary of the Interior in September 1966.
But within six months, Con Ed officials--spurred by a Fortune
magazine headline, ``The Company You Love to Hate''--asked
Mr. Luce to take control of the company.
Mr. Luce's first wife, Helen Oden, died in 2001. He is
survived by his second wife, the former Margaret Richmond;
two sons, James, of Vancouver, Washington, and Charles Jr.,
of Boulder, Colorado; two daughters, Christina Gordon of
Mansfield Center, Connecticut, and Barbara Luce of Portland,
Connecticut; and eight grandchildren.
Mr. Luce was an avid biker. As Con Ed chairman, he would
regularly pedal around Manhattan on a three-speed bike,
wearing a meter-reader's cap, inspecting company work crews
and peeking into open manholes.
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