MANGAHAO POWER SCHEME.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1715, 5 January 1920, Page 5

MANGAHAO POWER SCHEME.

PROGRESS OF THE WORK,

(Own Correspondent.)

After-months of heart-breaking work,; tolerably passable road lias been made int< the camp. r l he constant rain has made thi. work most difficult, for when the road i. wet —and it seldom is anything else—it i: impossible io pull a loaded dray over it. The engineer has had to watch the weather very closely and grasp every available chance to do some work on tho road. The road is at present the most important pari of the work, for until that is completed no gear can ho delivered on to the job, gird the work proper cannot' be pushed forward. Preliminary work is'well advanced and anyone having an idea of the circumstance; will admit that all that could be done has been done. It is not much use for the 1 man in the, street or tho M.P. sitting comfortably in his arm chair to cry out about the delay, for without full knowledge of the climatic conditions and tho nature of the country it is impossible for one to imagine the difficulties that have to bo overcome. For instance, it is hard to imagine a dray with five staunch horses being stuck in the mud on A level road, with a load of Jess

than one ton —eighteen hundredweight to 1)0 exact—stuck so fast that the load had to be discharged on the side of the - road and left there for two days before it could bo delivered three-quarters of a mile fur thcr on. Again the cla.-ss of men offering is not of the best type. In many cases they are quite unsuited for the style of work required and aa a consequence frequent changes in the gangs take place. These men leave the work and go into town and tell a tale of woe about the roughness of the job and poor accommodation supplied. Tent life in wet country is not the best, it is freely admitted, but the Government is providing very decent hutments for tin men. Two married men’s huts are almost completed and as soon as the timber arrives these will bo finished off and others built as rapidly as possible. Provision is being made for a largo cookhouse, with reading room and billiard room attached. The foundation has been lain for several other buildings. It is hoped to get the sawmill machinery to the site during the-holidays, and if the weather is fine there should not be much difficulty in carrying out tnis plan. » Everything depends upon the weather; if it is wet it will be impossible to use the 'road. The sawmill plant is a,t Shannon, as is also the boilers for the temporary power-house. There will ho little trouble in getting the power-house gear into ixisition; iu fact the heaviest lifts are on the site now. The site for the power-house is fortunately situated where it can he easily reached from a compara tively good road. Further on from the camp, cuttings and fillings are being pushed on with, in connection with the road formation from the Tokomaru Valley, where the main camp is situated, to the .Mangahao river, which is to be tlio source of the supply of water. Briefly, the outline of of the “scheme.’’ shorn of technical terms, is to turn the Mangahao river into a lake and carry the water from the lake to the power-house, To carry out this project it will bo necessary to place two big dams across the Mangahao river to collect the water, and then by means of tunnels carry the water through a range of hills into the Tokomaru Valley. The valley will have to ho blocked up at the outlet, which fortunately narrows down to a gap in one place. This gap is to bo filled up with a big wall obconcrete and will thus form the lake that is to he. From this lake, which ..will contain many millions of gallons of water, another tunnel will carry the water through another range of hills to the surge chamber, which is a “glorified” tank, the bottom of which will bo level—or practically so—with the bottom of the lake and the top of it above the highest level of the water in the lake. From this chamber the .water will bo taken through immense pipes to the turbines in the power-house and will generate the power there, which in tunbwill he carried to Wellington and elsewhere, over cables, to various sUb-stations. From the sub-stations the power, or “ juice” will ho distributed to factory and dwelling-house through the familiar meters and fittings that are to bo found in almost every house in Wellington. The only difference in the ordinary house will be perhaps the arrival of a few queerlooking things that will turn out to bo grillers, toasters, kettles, saucepans, etc., and strangest of all in these times a reduction of the price. Given two or three months of fair weather this summer there seems to be no great reason why everything should not be in order for pushing the work on without interruption to a successful issue. The heavy rainfall in the district, which makes the project foasjble, is the main factor in delaying the work. East month nearly 13 inches of rain fell; 3.90 inches of this‘total fell in 24 hours. There is plenty of room for good men on the works; the conditions are rapidly improving, and any man who is willing to work can find a good job for the next two or throe years.