Farmers face return to diesel

Press, 15 September 1989, Page 1

Farmers face return to diesel

By

DIANE KEENAN

— When two isolated Lees Valley fanners, lan and Erica Stokes, finally said goodbye to their old diesel generator 19 years ago they thought the switch to mains electricity would be permanent Mr Stokes and other Lees Valley residents fought for nine years to have electricity connected to their farms. ' The Stokes, like other Canterbury high country farmers, were dismayed at the Government’s restructuring proposals for electricity announced this week. As a result of the proposed reforms, an Electricity Supply Association spokesman, Mr Mike

Underhill, predicted that electricity prices in remote . rural areas could rise to a prohibitive level.

He suggested that some customers in remote areas could find it cheaper to revert to diesel generation. For the Stokes turning back the clock 20 years would be a retrograde step. ?. Mr Stokes said Lees Valley was one of the last areas in North Canterbury to be, connected to the reticulation system.

He first presented a case for an electricity supply in 1961, but the battle, which involved

“countless* submissions, was not won until-1970.

A friendly rivalry existed between Lees' Valley and Lewis Pass residents over who would get electricity first “liwas?a real struggle, but we managedjto get the supply only after guaranteeing to pay for a specified amount of electricity each year,” Mr Stokes said. “Any suggestion that we may have to revert to diesel is crazy.” Mrs Stokes said she had hoped diesel generators were a thing of thevpast because she did not have happy memories of the unreliability of their former power system.

“I lost count of the number of times that my husband would be out at all hours of the night trying to fix the generator,” she said.

“It wasn’t easy (living without mains electricity) as appliances such as a deep freeze were out of the question.” Mr Stokes described the threat of a substantial electricity price rise in remote rural areas as yet another attempt by bureaucrats to prune services. “In Lees Valley we’re at the end of the line in a cost-plus economy — there’s no way we can put another dollar on to the price-we receive for our lambs

just to pay for a rise in our electricity bill,” he said. Federated Farmers has joined the protest over the possibility of big price increases for rural consumers.

The chairman of the South Island high country committee, Mr Hamish Ensor, said the provision of electricity should be seen in the same light as other services such as education and health. “It should be the Government’s objective to make its services accessible to everyone in the community at the same cost,” he said.

Rises denied, page 4