WATER STORAGE FOR POWER

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26856, 8 October 1952, Page 10

WATER STORAGE FOR POWER

FURTHER REDUCTION THIS WEEK The South Island’s power problems for the year are not yet over, and there is still an urgent need for continued savings to be made. This was made clear by the assistant district engineer of the State Hydro-electric Department (Mr E. E. James) and the en-gineer-manager of the M.E.D. (Mr J. C. Forsyth) yesterday. Between 9 a.m. on Monday and 9 a.m. yesterday, there was a further drop of 220,000 units in storage for the South Island system, Mr James said. Storage yesterday morning was 37,720,000 units. The weather in the catchment areas was fine yesterday, and there was no sign of any rain. Flows were decreasing, and conditions generally were again deteriorating slowly. Yesterday morning Lake Coleridge was only 2.06 ft above retention level, at Pukaki there was .15ft of storage water, and at Tekapo the water was again down to retention level. In the M.E.D. area, consumers made a bad start, consumption on Monday being 5.6 per cent, above the allocation. With storage still going down, the seriousness of the position had not in any way been reduced, said Mr Forsyth, and a greater savings effort was needed.