Power Boards' Merger

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29890, 2 August 1962, Page 12

Power Boards' Merger

The proposed merger of the Springs-Ellesmere and Banks Peninsula Electric Power Boards is a logical way of increasing the general efficiency and economy of electricity distribution in a large area of Canterbury. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of this scheme Is the friendly way in which amalgamation appears to have been negotiated. There are excellent economic and technical arguments for treating the two boards’ districts as complementary. Reorganisation is opportune not only because of the immediate benefits to present consumers, but because of the desirability of expanding demand to cope with unpre cedented supplies of power from the South Island’s hydro • electric generators, and because of the possi bility that alternative sources of energy m the North Island will result m the South having a substantial power surplus even when the Cook Strait cable is in use. The pity is that a similarly sensible approach to power board problems generally has not yet been possible.

The fusion of the two Canterbury boards will give effect to a principle advocated unsuccessfully by a Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Labour Government in 1959. In its report, this commission recommended amalgamation of New Zealand's 83 power supplv authorities into 26 boards For Canterbury, three main authorities, formed from the existing 15 power authorities. were suggested. This svstem. the commission considered could result in an annual saving of about £29.000 in the cost of units sold in »he new Christchurch board’s area. Though the commission’s principal recommendations were foredoomed to rejection, the economic. administrative, and engineering considerations upon which they

rested were fundamentally those now actuating the Banks Peninsula and Springs-Ellesmere merger. It is satisfactory that what apparently is still impossible on a large scale can be accomplished in at least one instance through good sense.