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At only 61, Steve Hyde isn't planning a second career after his final days with the Genesee County Economic Development Center; he's planning to try out an actual retirement -- for awhile, at least.

"My kind of core values in retirement, I think are, I want to spend more time with my family, do a little traveling," Hyde said in an exclusive interview with The Batavian on Monday. "I'll try to be around to help out, but it's time to step away from the limelight and the leadership role a little bit."

Hyde has led the EDC for 21 years, overseeing the construction of eight shovel-ready industrial parks, including WNY STAMP, the Genesee Valley Agribusiness Park, Apple Tree Acres, Buffalo East Tech Park, and Gateway I & II corporate parks, among them. During that time, GCEDC has assisted more than 500 projects, from building expansions to whole new factories, worth a combined $2 billion-plus of investments leading to the creation of thousands of new jobs and increased tax revenue for municipalities and school districts.

With so much talk about global warming and climate change, that would seem to be the likely culprit for drought so extreme it has dried up dozens of wells in pockets of Genesee County.

However, Stephen Shaw, associate professor for environmental resources engineering at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, says it might be much more random than that.

Shaw has just completed a 20-year analysis and a report about dry wells across the entire northeast. He found that a drought in 2016 was “pretty intense,” especially across Western New York and Buffalo in particular. That didn’t match what these towns — the volume of households — in Genesee County have experienced, he said.