Checks wanted on safety of small hydro schemes

Press, 10 January 1983, Page 2

Checks wanted on safety of small hydro schemes

PA . Wellington The committee of inquiry into the Wheao canal dam collapse will be held behind closed doors and will not provide an adequate forum for all aspects of safety and engineering to be considered, according to the general secretary of the New Zealand Workers’ Union, Mr Dan Duggan. Mr Duggan, who repeated his call for a full public inquiry, said it was of extreme concern that some $2OO million worth of small local body hydro development had Occurred in the last two years, “with no guarantee that the engineering aspects were foolproof.”

He said those guarantees could only be made with the involvement and expertise of the Ministry of Works and Development. Mr Duggan said Ministry officials could not speak out freely on this matter because they were senior representa-

tives of the Government, but his union knew from what it had been told by these officials that the work of private contractors had in some cases been “shocking.”

“We need to have a look at the whole of the engineering and safety procedures,” he said.

Mr Duggan said collapses must never happen again. “Next time there could be a huge loss of life,” he said. A full public inquiry should also look at the conflict between the public and private sectors on the construction of such projects, including the Clyde project, where the private sector was taking over a large part of the work from the Ministry. Commission for the Environment' recommendations' almost six years ago for safety checks on small hydro-power schemes were never implemented, according to the Commissioner for the Environment, Mr K. Piddington.

The recommendations were coincidentally made in a commission appraisal of an environmental impact report on the Wheao power scheme. In its report, published in May, 1977, the commission said it wanted to see small hydro development projects subjected to thorough scrutiny to satisfy the public that safety criteria were given full attention.

“This appraisal is used as an opportunity to point out to those involved in assessing environmental impacts in future that this is an area that requires attention,” the commission said. It added that the inclusion of these comments in the Wheao report did not reflect on the safety aspects of that particular project. While appreciating that the standard of engineering in New Zealand was high, the commission considered that they should be:

• A system that ensures design criteria and specifications are checked before construction is approved. • A surveillance system to ensure that the behaviour

of the structures in service is checked regularly. Mr Piddington said that neither of these suggestions had been acted on. According to the commission’s 1977 findings, it was the responsibility of the Ministry to check for sufficient margins of safety for local body projects that involved loan moneys from the Local Authorities Loans Board.

Where a local body independently raised the finance, there was no requirement for Ministry checking, although engineering codes would apply.

In the case of the Wheao project, the Ministry has said its responsibilities ended at the stage where Government loans were approved after a study of the scheme’s feasibility. It had no supervisory role in the project’s construction.

New Zealand has more than 40 small hydro schemes run or under construction by local bodies. In 1977, the commission found the Wheao scheme had considerable merit in the energy field.