Carey, Ohio

Published May 2013

The Village of Carey is a small community located in northwest Ohio about halfway between Columbus and Toledo. With a population of approximately 3,600, Carey residents enjoy a leisurely pace of life while still having the conveniences of larger neighboring cities.

Carey was named for the Honorable Judge John Carey, one of the region’s first settlers. A businessman and railroad advocate, Carey was also president of the Indiana, Bloomington and Western Railroad, which ran through the town. The village was incorporated in 1858 and John Carey later became a member of the Ohio General Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives.

A family town, the village strives to keep the community as environmentally proactive as possible, while also remaining flexible and citizen friendly.

Historic village
Carey is the home of the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, a destination since 1875 for thousands of annual religious pilgrimages.

Due to the village’s quarries, National Lime and Stone Co. is one of Carey’s oldest and most productive industries, having been a part of the community since the early 1900s.

Carey takes local commerce seriously and the village is working to improve the Downtown Business District with underground wiring, vintage lights, pedestrian furniture and enhancements to the general streetscape.

Currently, major Carey industries and employers are in manufacturing, but there are many commercial buildings and properties available.

Dependable power for more than 100 years
Carey has a long history in public power, having owned and operated its own electric utility since 1909. The village has a diverse portfolio when it comes to power supply, including wind, landfill gas, solar, hydroelectric and other renewable energy sources.

The Carey Municipal Light and Power staff operates and maintains about 22 miles of electric lines. This includes voltage regulators, transformers, lightning arrestors, fuses and switches, which all help to keep the local electric service reliable.

The village serves more than 1,800 meters in residential, commercial and industrial customers. The department also maintains three substations as well as two separate looped interconnections – a commitment to the future of Carey and its residents.

As a member of AMP, Carey participates in a number of AMP programs and projects that assist in providing reliable energy and other benefits to the community and its citizen-owners. These include:

  • AMP Fremont Energy Center, a natural gas combined cycle facility that provides energy and capacity
  • Business/Economic Development, AMP assistance designed to augment local economic development efforts
  • Meldahl/Greenup, which includes the run-of-the-river hydroelectric generating facility currently under construction at the Captain Anthony Meldahl Dam on the Ohio River and the existing generating facility at the Greenup Dam, also on the Ohio River
  • Municipal Energy Services Agency (MESA), providing member communities a source of technical assistance including planning, design and engineering, field services and training assistance
  • Mutual Aid, a network of municipal electric systems that assist each other when utility emergencies occur that are too widespread to be handled by one system alone
  • North Central AMP Service Group (NCASG)
  • New York Power Authority (NYPA), providing hydroelectricity generated by the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers
  • OSHA compliance, a contractual-based program that expands on the general safety program
  • Phase 1 Hydro, which includes the run-of-the-river generating facilities currently under construction at the Cannelton, Smithland and Willow Island dams on the Ohio River
  • The Prairie State Energy Campus, in southern Illinois, a 1,600-MW state-of-the-art supercritical mine-mouth plant and adjacent coal mine

For more information, please visit www.careyohio.org.