AUCKLAND'S TOWER SUPPLY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19659, 10 June 1927, Page 10

AUCKLAND'S TOWER SUPPLY.

The conference of power board representatives held at Hamilton yesterday can be counted as satisfactory since it agreed on the need for providing auxiliary power to keep pace with the demand until current from Arapuni becomes available. This is paramount. The disposition to suggest that present resources would be sufficient, and to wait in that comfortable belief until events proved otherwise, fortunately was not allowed to rule the gathering. The Minister of Public Works was doing no more than shouldering a just responsibility in undertaking to see that the boards were not left without power during the unexpected period of waiting. This applies particularly to the Auckland Power Board. Some country representatives were inclined to suggest that the needs of Auckland were given undue prominence. They should remember that but for the contract Auckland made with the Public Works Department it is very ,doubtful whether t,he Arapuni scheme, on which all their hopes are centred, would have proceeded. It is on the expectation of an assured demand from the city and the territory immediately surrounding it that the whole financing of the project rests. Making all

due allowances for the feelings and susceptibilities of the country representatives it is still true that Auckland is essential to the successful prosecution of the Arapuni scheme in a degree that none of them is. The Auckland Power Board was encouraged, indeed urged, to foster demand as energetically as it could in *the expectation of receiving Arapuni power by April, 1928. That being now impossible, to leave the Power Board with the full burden of bridging the gap would not be just, nor indeed good business. The positiofi is simply that in default of other resources the Auckland Power Board simply must make provision to meet the needs of its customers. Since the Government as party to the contract of supply cannot divest itself of responsibility for seeing that the position is maintained until Arapuni is working, its offer of eo-operation in the work of carrying on is no more than equitable.