POWER BOARD PROPOSALS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 10 March 1933, Page 7

POWER BOARD PROPOSALS

(To the Editor) Sir—Your report of the recent resolution of the’ Waimen Electric Power Board to purchase the Bnghtwatei plant in defiance of the ratepayers whose vote by the constitutional poll turned it down so emphatically, must have startled everyone affected. Surely the public have not so soon forgotten the pressure Unit was brought to beta on this question by those financially interested at the time—the threat that .some outsider was waiting to snap up such bargain if the Power Board did not accept their offer before a certain date. Since then in answer to their customer’s application for a reduction in the price of their electric light an official investigation by the government disclosed the fact that the Waimea (Bright water) Electric; Supply and Manufacturing Company’s balance sheets showed a very small profit to 3J per cent. It is all the more difficult to understand the Power Board s resolution in view of recent discoveries and the predictions of those eminent electrical engineers, most experienced in the science and utility of electricity, who assure us that in the near future both electric light and power will he conveyed from power-house to customer by wireless means, thus very materially reducing the cost by the elimination of the present expensive mode of reticulation. Have the gentlemen on the Power Board read and digested the published results of experiments hy which electric light was actually conveyed some miles hy wireless and brilliantly illuminated a farm residence recently? Yet the Power Board proposes to saddle ratepayers with an obsolete plant which has been so dear for consumers, so unprofitable and so persistently “on the market” for years, in spite of more knowledge and such well founded promises for the betterment of the ratepayers and all who want cheap light and power, and not, withstanding the severe depression, still so distressing throughout the land—with butterfat down to old per lb, wool, stock and all other farm products almost unsaleable or only quitted for less than the cost of production. Trusting other and more aide pens will help to “deliver us from the evil” by your courtesy, Sir, —1 am etc., H. 0. BERRYMAN. Christchurch, Bth March.