The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1955. Planning For Power

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27631, 12 April 1955, Page 12

The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1955. Planning For Power

For many years the power boards and electric supply authorities have urged the creation within the State Hydro-electric Department of a separate branch to investigate and design new power stations—vital tasks that are now carried out by the harassed and overburdened Ministry of Works. If a concrete • example were needed to support the ' general argument that, as things are, lit is nobody’s business to look after i the power needs of anything but the I immediate future, it is to be found 'in the departmental dilatoriness j over the Hurunui river investigation. In August, 1952, the Minister lin charge of the State Hydroelectric Department (Mr Goosman) informed the Canterbury Progress League, which had urged consideration of the power potentialities of the Hurunui, that a gauge to measure flow in the upper reaches of the river had been approved by the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council, “ and that the “actual work involved” was “ awaiting the availability of staff ”, Nearly three years later, according tv a report to the league by the members of a deputation which met Mr Goosman recently, the gauge has still not been installed because of shortage of staff, although both the Minister and the general manager of the State Hydro-electric Department (Mr A. E. Davenport) admitted that it was a small job that should have been done years ago. And it would have been done years ago if there had been any department or organisation in this country charged solely with the responsibility of preparing for the power schemes of the near and distant future. Bedevilled by a chronic shortage cf engineers and technical staff of all kinds, the State Hydroelectric Department and the Ministry of Works concern themselves with the most immediate and most pressing problems. Hydro.-electric development in New Zealand is a hand-to-mouth business—a frenzied scramble to investigate the most likely-looking scheme in sight and then to keep the planning and designing one jump ahead of the builders and the supply not more than two or three jumps behind the demand. The order of the various projects is determined not by a careful comparison of the economics, location, and seasonal characteristics of a number of investigated sites, but by somebody’s intelligent guess as to which site would best repay investigation and survey. It is probable that Roxburgh was chosen as the next major scheme in the South Island mainly because no other site had at that time been investigated as fully. Benmore, on the Waitaki, will inevitably be the next succeeding development because no other comparable scheme has been completely investigated, and it is too late now to consider

alternatives even if staff were available.

That is not to say that either is a bad choice, or that the development of the North Canterbury and Marlborough rivers, which seem to effer certain advantages over the snow-fed rivers further south, should have been preferred. The point is tn at the information on which comparisons might be made—and on which decisions should be based—is not available and still is not being collected. The hydraulic characteristics of every New Zealand river likely to be considered as a source of electric power should be recorded, not merely for the few years preceding development, but permanently and continuously. Such a study should be the foundation of electric power planning in this country; and it is deeply disturbing to find that the study is not being made comprehensively and systematically. Clearly it will not be made until some agency is appointed for the specific purpose; and if it is contended that an investigating and planning branch of the State Hydroelectric Department could not be established without impoverishing other departments already short of staff, the answer is that few things are more important than the future supply of electric power.