Power for Cashmere Hospital

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27075, 25 June 1953, Page 8

Power for Cashmere Hospital

The account given to the North Canterbury Hospital Board yesterday of its spokesmen’s discussions in Wellington on Monday with Cabinet Ministers and departmental officials will leave the public in some doubt about the real reasons for the Government’s insistence on a solid-fuel power plant for the new Cashmere hospital. Although the Minister in charge of the State Hydro-electric Department (Mr Goosman) eventually declared that he would have to resist “to the “ limit ” the proposal for all-electric servicing of the hospital on account of the capital expenditure involved, he had earlier appeared to base his opposition on the probability of a continuing power shortage. The report on the deputation by the board’s secretary (Mr A. Prentice) quoted Mr Goosman as referring to the present power shortage and stating that “it would be a long “time before the department could “catch up”. But every statement that has been made about power by the present Government and the previous Government, as well as the State Hydro-electric Department, has led the people of the South Island to believe that there will be no shortage in the South Island once the Roxburgh hydro-electric station is opened, which will be a year or two years before the opening of the Cashmere hospital. Typical of these statements is this passage from the address of the general manager of the State Hydroelectric Department (Mr A. E. Davenport) to a power supply authorities’ conference in 1950:

Roxburgh, of course, is the station which we are all watching, and the first operation of which will bring to this island freedom from power shortage. We hope and trust there will never be occasion afterwards for power shortage to recur in this island. Roxburgh is big enough to give the margin required against dry seasons; it is big enough to cope even with the most optimistic load growth. The extensions can be put in—or the new machines can be put in—without great trouble or without great works or cost, once the initial work is done.

Can it seriously be suggested that the power requirements of one hospital, even such a large hospital as Cashmere, with an estimated annual consumption of 15,000,000 units, will transform this promise of plenty into the certainty of famine? The suggestion is clearly untenable. The relevance of the State Hydroelectric Department’s method of computing the cost of the national investment in the power supply for the hospital is also open to question. As Professor Rastrick, the board’s consultant, has pointed out, this is relevant only in times of power shortage—when the department has

a market for all the power it can generate. This position should not be arrived at for many years after the opening of Roxburgh; and the department and future governments will be very unwise if they ever again allow the margin of safety to dwindle to the point where the extra power demand of Cashmere hospital determines the starting and completion dates of another major hydro-electric station.

It seems likely, however, that the I main objection to the North Can- 1 terbury Hospital Board’s proposals i is neither the capital cost nor the future lack of power but the annual running costs which have to be found mainly by the Health Department. The board does not seem „to have been able to challenge seriously or substantially the Health Department’s estimate that all-electric services would cost £69,000 a year against £38,600 for a solid-fuel plant. The disparity, if it can be accepted, is clearly large enough to warrant the department favouring solid-fuel plants as a general policy, so long as there is a positive assurance of sufficient coal being available. The North Canterbury Hospital Board’s case for the all-

electric hospital at Cashmere must therefore rest upon considerations which justify its being treated as, an exceptional case. Although it is obvious, as Mr J. J. Brownlee said, that the department is “scared” to allow a precedent, the considerations are in fact very weighty indeed. The promises by the departments concerned, both express and implied,

deserve more consideration than the Ministers now seem prepared to give them. As they were given before the department determined its general policy, Cashmere need not be a precedent for the allelectric servicing of hospitals to be built subsequently. Finally, by any standard of common sense, it seems unfortunate that the first attempt by the department to demonstrate the practicability of a smokeless and fumeless coal-burning power plant should be made in a residential suburb where the consequences of failure, partial or complete, would be very serious indeed. The board should scrutinise very carefully the assurances it may receive on this point and on the future availability of suitable coal before it finally gives up its just and reasonable fight.