Manapouri Supporters Active

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32251, 20 March 1970, Page 16

Manapouri Supporters Active

A party of 11 city councillors, officers of the Municipal Electricity Department and council officials who went to Manapouri on Wednesday to see the latest addition to New Zealand’s hydro - electric power system found that they were the targets for ‘Save Manapouri” pleas and even “Save Te Anau” when they were not inspecting the power site or station.

The power-house, more than 700 feet below the lake surface and reached now by an automatic lift in two minutes instead of by a bumpy ride in a truck down the access tunnel, is generating power to be fed into the main grid. The station is destined to meet the needs of the Bluff aluminium smelter with seven generating machines producing 700,000 kilowatts.

Four machines have been completed. Workmen on the others make up only a shadow of the work-force which spent several years at West Arm building the powerhouse and at Deep Cove, six miles and a half away underground where the tunnel ■ tail-race discharges water | that has produced power. I The council party went to IDeep Cove in a tourist bus. The driver, a former Christchurch traffic officer, found the engineers a ready butt for jokes to reinforce his conservation propaganda. Lake levels apart, he had to admit that engineers who had built the steep road over the Wilmot Pass, a by-product of the power scheme which has opened up a new tourist scene, had done their best to preserve the bush countryside. Nature has already covered some of the engineers’ scars, with lichens and moss growing over cuttings.

If some of the technical explanations at the powerhouse and at Deep Cove, where the once-proud liner

Wanganella has served asj bed and board to thousands i of workers from almost every corner of the world, were lost to the layman, but appreciated by the engineers, the conservationist’s message was clear. EVEN TOURISTS

Even a bus-load of tourists at Deep Cove, where the Wanganella is staffed by a few men preparing her for a tow to Hong Kong next month and the quietly-flowing stream from the tail-race gives no hint of the years of work consuming millions of dollars, were prepared to advocate conservation.

Councillors, six of them

members of the electricity committee, and technical officers were probably inclined towards raising of the lake by the suggested 27ft to meet power needs. None signed the “save Manapouri” petition forms at the tourist centre at West Arm. The petition’s latest pages contain names from many North Island towns and those of several ! Australians. A “soft sell” was an invitation by a travel and tourist company to fly back five members of the party to Te Anau while the others went by launch. The invitation was specifically to journalists from the two Christchurch

newspapers, with councillors making up,the load of the small float-plane. Cr G. D. Hattaway, chairman of the committee, who led the party, chose Cr P. D. Dunbar, who has acted as chairman, and Cr L. G. Amos, a former electricity committee chairman, to go on the flight. AT MONOWAI They were taken to the south arm of Manapouri) where they landed on the! water and saw an experimental clearing of the bush and were then taken to Lake Monowai. This lake was raised seven! feet about 40 years ago to

provide a better supply of power. It has been admitted readily that the action was a mistake.

Stumps sticking out of the water, resembling a surrealistic painting or even a gar-goyle-like mural of Belsen camp survivors, convinced the Christchurch visitors that this should not happen at Manapouri.

The three councillors were not sure that there should be a complete ban on raising the level: but all agreed that unless there was adequate protection of Manapouri’s shoreline or some alternative, there should not be a Monowai repetition.

“It has convinced me,” Cr I Dunbar said. “If it costs ssm to clear the Manapouri shoreline before the lake is raised, it would be a small amount compared with the sloom we are told has been spent on the scheme,” Cr Hattaway said. Cr Amos, who, on the trip by launch up the lake, had said that the raising of the lake, while submerging some of the islands he had seen, would not interfere too much with beaches and beech-lined shoreline, was also convinced that there should be some alternative. He remained an advocate of electrical progress, and said that if Te Anau remained and Manapouri was reasonably protected the tourist trade would not suffer' much in the march of pro-' gress. TE ANAU CLAIM He was supported by a Te Anau resident, who told the Christchurch party yesterday that the lake on which he built his home had a greater claim as a tourist attraction than Manapouri. His home would vanish in any raising of Te Anau. but might also be endangered by a flood. On the flight back to Christchurch the party saw man-made lakes that have added attraction to the country. These are among the benefits of the development of hydro-electric power; but some of the men concerned with the distribution of that power have returned to Christchurch with freshly raised doubts about economics and aesthetics.