NEW POWER STATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 74, 24 February 1938, Page 7

NEW POWER STATION

LINK IN SOUTHERN CHAIN. Per Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Feb. 23., Provision for the erection in a few years of a hydro-electric station capable of developing 17,000 k.w., equal to half the output of Lake Coleridge, is to be made bv the Public Works Department. The site of the projected station is on the southern bank of the Ilakaia River directly north < f Methven, where the diversion race supplying water for irrigation purposes to the Ashburton, Lyndhurst, Hinds and Mayfield areas will dip down into the Rakaia after a 40-mile run over down country and plains when completed. No date for a start will be fixed for a long time yet. The new station will be an important unit in the links of the electricitygenerating chain now connecting Lake Coleridge, Waitaki and Waipori. The value will be that a full head of water of 1000 cusecs will be available for turning the turbine in winter time as no water then will be required to be diverted into the irrigation races. A factor of still greater influence in the decision is that in the winter months the flows of water of the Waitaki and Lake Coleridge stations are low, both the present main stations depending for supplies on glacier sources. The site lends itself naturally to the purposes of a power station, there being a fall of 350 feet from the terrace where the diversion race will end to the selected location of the station.