Only low dam ‘justified’

Press, 5 July 1982, Page 6

Only low dam ‘justified’

Forecasts on future electricity consumption in the South Island justified building a low dam at Clyde, but not a high dam, said the Labour Party’s spokesman on energy, Mr D. F. Caygill,' last evening. Now that the proposed aluminium smelter at Aramoana would not go ahead, there was no justification for a high dam, he said. “In the absence of the second smelter, the Government is falling back on threadbare arguments for the high dam,” said Mr Caygill. The Minister of Energy (Mr. Birch) had argued that

the South Island would need the electricity generated by a high dam in the future because demand had picked up. - . . “When we analysed that we found that the Ministry had allowed in its projections for substantial blocks of electricity to be taken up by an . unspecified industrial development, ' namely, something like a substitute smelter,” he said. Without the smelter or a big project like it, there was no demand for the amount of electricity generated by a high _ dam. Projections on electricity • consumption showed the need for a low dam, however.

The argument that a high dam was cheaper to build than the low dam option was also incorrect, he said. It was “strictly true” that building a low dam at Clyde and then a low dam at Cromwell later would cost more than the high dam “in dollar-of-the-day terms.” Building two dams, however, meant spending the dollars at different times. Mr Caygill said that the argument that the. high dam should go ahead because orchards had already been removed from the Cromwell Gorge was not true. Although the trees had gone, the land

was still productive and could be used if a low dam were built. He disputed suggestions that irrigation schemes could not go ahead if the high dam was not built. He acknowledged that there was potential for irrigation with a high dam. but there was no guarantee that this would be taken up. Farmers still had to meet the cost of developing irrigation. There was irrigation potential from water resoiircces in the area now in the Manuherikia and Fraser rivers, but these were not being used.