Tremendous Project Bay Power Board Progress Figures

Northern Advocate, 20 December 1945, Page 3

Tremendous Project Bay Power Board Progress Figures

(Special) KAIKOHE, This Day. “It will be for this board, which has had its life almost entirely during the period of the war, a tremendout undertaking,” stated the consulting engineer to the Bay of Islands Power Board (Mr L. Mandeno) when discussing a request from the newly set-up Rural Electricity Reticulation Council for surveys of all areas for which assistance might be sought from the council by power boards throughout the Dominion.

“It is almost impossible,” said Mr Mandeno, “to sort out those areas in which assistance will be needed as against those in which it will not.” This, he said applied particularly to the counties of Hokianga and Whangaroa, also northern Mangonui, which at present had no power supply from the board at all.

Surveys as requested could be arranged for remaining areas in the Bay and Mangonui counties, Mr Mandeno added. Even there, valleys, in the future, would be opened up that so far had not been looked at from the viewpoint of reticulation with a subsidy. Mr W. H. White (Hokianga) agreed that the request was “a bit unreasonable for a new board.”

The board chairman (Mr L. Peace) considered the request was in the nature of an advance tip to have information ready for the start of the council’s functioning in April of next year.