Waimairi Power District

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24445, 20 December 1944, Page 4

Waimairi Power District

The. Gazette notice, constituting a Waimairi Electric Power District, with the same boundaries as the county to-day, is a surprising development. The petition to have a power area constituted was circulated towards the ehd of 1942, and the petition and plan.were formally open to public scrutiny from December 19, 1942, to January 19, 1943. The Christchurch City Council lodged an Objection. The Minister of Works, through the Hon. D. Wilson, informed the council that he thought “ the whole matter “ should be left in abeyance till “after the war”. Six weeks later, in reply to another letter from the City Council, the Minister in effect reaffirmed this opinion. But Mr Semple’s plainest and most telling comment on the proposal was made in a statement which did not expressly refer to it but defined the Governments policy on power distribution and distributing administration. generally. This statement Vfas reported on February 2 last year. Distribution [Mr> Semple said] is the function of electric power boards. Other bodies, too, have been distributing power; but their coverage makes them not so efficient as the power boards. Even with power boards there is room for amalgamation, In fact, the whole policy of the Government leans towards amalgamation rather than the setting up of new bodies. After the war it is Intended at The earliest possible time to review the whole question of distribution. This is not the time to be setting up or amalgamating bodies. • Nevertheless, in conditions which remain as forbidding as when the Minister described them, the Gazette notice will have the effect of setting up a new body. Moreover, its effect will be to set’ up a board over a power area of that small coverage which the Minister found inconsistent with efficiency. And its effect finally, runs counter to the declared policy of amalgamating existing authorities rather than creating more. There is ample reason here, without looking further, to say that the decision signified in the Gazette is disturbingly difficult to understand. But there is another good reason to say so. The Waimairi County Council itself, which had favoured and advanced the movement to set up the power area and authority, has regarded the question as closed, for the duration of the war, and closed by the word of the Minister. It said so, in a letter to the Christchurch City Council in May, last year. In the

circumstance?, it is necessary to ask why and at whose instance it has suddenly been opened again—to be settled by a decision ‘which there was no previous cause whatever to expect. ''