WAIPORI POWER WORKS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20175, 8 February 1929, Page 10

WAIPORI POWER WORKS

-* * • STATE PURCHASE PROPOSED."

OFFER TO DUNEDIN COUNCIL;

PAYMENT OF ABOUT £500.000:' [BY TELEGRAPH.—OWN CORBESF-OSDEKT.I DUNEDIN. Thursday." At the meeting of the City Council last evening the Electric-Power and Lighting Committee was authorised to proceed with negotiations arising out of an offer which the Government has made to acquire by purchase the headworks of the Waipori hydro electric power scheme. It is stated that one of fhe Government's alternative offers is to buy the Waipori headworks for a figure equal to what the city corporation has expended on them, and sell the power in bulk to the city corporation' at the same price « it is calculated it would have cost th#? corporation to develop that power itself Thus a change of ownership should not mean that consumers would have to pay the standard Government rates, which ar« much higher than those current in Dn n i edin. In round figures the Waipori headworks have cost the corporation -about£soo,ooo, and there is a projected expenditure of another £250,000.

It is the Government's policy to con-'" trol the headworks of the hydro-electric systems of the Dominion, but there exist® no legislative authority bv which th# Government could acquire Waipori com.'* pulsorily.