Electric Power Reticulation

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21972, 22 December 1936, Page 10

Electric Power Reticulation

At a meeting of the Ashburton Power Board yesterday several members vigorously attacked our leading article of the same day on electric power reticulation. It seems a pity that those who look part in the discussion did not first

discover what the leading article was about and what opinions were expressed in it. Had they done so they would have saved themselves the trouble of beating the air. The occasion for the article was a request for Government assistance towards the reticulation of the Cheviot and Amuri counties; the purpose of it was not so much to point conclusions as to clarify the issues involved in requests of this nature. We do not know what words of ours support Mr E. F. Nicoll in his impulsive belief that we .are advocating abolition of the power board system in order to provide cheap power for backblocks settlers. If Mr Nicoll re-reads the second half of the article he must surely realise that actually we are questioning the wisdom of any great extension of reticulation into sparsely-settled areas. What seems to have led Mr Nicoll astray is the contention that, if reticulation is to be widely extended into the backblocks, the power boards cannot be expected to shoulder the financial burden. Either the Government must give assistance in individual cases or the power system must be nationalised in order to spread as widely as possible the loss on obviously uneconomic reticulation. The second alternative seems to us the belter of the two, but why this very reasonable and in any case hypothetical choice should bring dov/n upon our heads a flood of figures about administration costs and sinking funds we are at a loss to discover. In case there should be any misapprehension we take this opportunity of saying that, in our opinion, the Ashburton Power Board manages its affairs with efficiency and economy.