POWER FROM TIDES

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VLI, Issue 3416, 4 December 1935, Page 4

POWER FROM TIDES

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE.

A £7,000,000 SCHEME FIRST OF .ITS KIND. Work has been started on a huge dam to trap the 28-feet sides of Passamaquoddy Bay, in the State of Maine, to provide cheap electricity, says a correspondent of the Sunday Times.

The work will cost about 36,000,000 dollars (£7,200,000), and will provide work for about 6000 men for two and a-half years. It is being financed from the 4,000,000,000 dollars (£BOO,000,000) fund voted for relief works. Passamaquoddy Bay, which is close to President Roosevelt’s summer residence, was chosen because of its unusually high tides, which sometimes rise to 40 feet, says the British United Press. United States Army engineers will have charge of the project, which is designed to develop 100,000 horsepower and produce 3,000,000,000 kilo-watt-hours annually. The dam will hold up the tides at their flood and release the pent-up water to work the huge generators. This is the first time that tidal power has been drawn upon for providing electrical power. When the plan was first put forward the Administration rejected it on the ground that the only market for power on a large scale was Boston, 200 miles away. Engineers now have plans for constructing an aluminium works to utilise the electricity and to pipe the water to industrial areas.

Farmers will benefit from the cheap electrical power, and it is anticipated that members of small industrial concerns will be attracted by the;prospect of cheap power.