figure 3. The Niagara Power Project under construction. (Used with permission from NYPA.) the st. Lawrence project could not advance as long as the canadian government refused to discuss it. fDr was sworn into the presidential office on 4 March 1933 by the chief justice of the supreme court, none other than charles evans hughes. Ironically, just three years later, the hughes court became the greatest impediment to fDr's New Deal-the self-same court that the president tried to "stack." the first phase in the development of public hydropower in New York ended in 1907, when hughes succeeded in passing the Public service Law to establish the state's Public Utility commissions, thereby restraining the unseemly large profits that privately owned utilities had been producing. but that success led fDr to the second phase, that of creating the Power authority of the state of New York in 1931. because of political infighting and the delays caused by world war II, the public power plants along the st. Lawrence and the Niagara rivershttp://www.nrec.com