Kentucky Power Chief Executive Officer Brett Mattison said he wants to emphasize four principles in his role as the new chief executive officer of Kentucky Power.

Those principles are safety, company culture, the customer and community growth. For the latter Mattison said he and Kentucky Power are committed to doing what is necessary to foster a climate of economic growth in the Tri-State, including making it possible for Braidy Industries to access the electric infrastructure needed to build a state-of-the-art aluminum mill at EastPark Industrial Center.

“We know it is vitally important to be an integral part of economic development and growth,” Mattison said in a recent interview with The Daily Independent. “And we will continue to do so. We’ve had some good successes with Braidy and we want to continue to see that success grow. We want them to be as large as they can be and knock it out of the park so to speak because we know what will happen. The residual impact from that growth will be suppliers and others seeing the quality of work that can be produced by those in this area — you’ll start getting traction and you’ll get one two (new businesses) and before you know it you start growing the area and you are starting to move in a diversified manner.”

Mattison took over as the CEO at Kentucky Power this past Fall. He said planning for the power infrastructure needed to feed Braidy and the EastPark Industrial Center continues. He said the process for getting that electricity to the park is going well.

“It is going good,” Mattison said. “We just had a call with our transmission partners… to talk about time tables where are we on the Braidy project. We are still getting right of way permitting and all of it looks very favorable. The position we always want to be in is that the customer is never waiting on us. We always will be there and ready. There are a few things left to do. Things have been engineered and when Braidy says here’s our in service date we will start putting shovels in the ground and build transmission systems to serve their needs. There will be a substation we will have to build to serve them and with them being a large manufacturer they’ll have their own substation they will have to maintain.”

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