THE WAIPORI SCHEME.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15825, 25 July 1913, Page 4

THE WAIPORI SCHEME.

Ttie gravamen of the complaint on the part of the members of tho City Council who criticised 'this i week the operations of the Municipal Electric Power and Lighting Department and the cost of the more recently approved extensions of the Waipori system is that the Corporation has been led into an expenditure considerably beyond that which was foreseen or at all events estimated. While authorised, to raise a loan of £75,000 in connection with the installation of a third generating unit at Waipori the Council bus found it necessary to make provision for an expenditure about 45 per cent, in excess of that estimate. In the circumstances the ratepayers will agree that it is quite tho proper thing and quite in accordance with precedent on the part of councillors to be asking questions, demanding explanations, and offering some free if rather undiscriminating criticism. The great disparity between the original estimate of cost in this particular instance and tho estimate which has now been!

arrived at seems to be explained best by the fact that, after works have been authorised and undertaken, improvements and modifications have suggested them-, selves which the Council, relying on the advice of its executive* officer, has sanctioned with results rather astonishing to itself in the sequel. It is not without the range of probability, however, that the modifications agreed /upon destroy the utility of portion of the original design, and it may be taken for granted that in cases where a scheme is altered and enlarged as an afterthought the nltimate cost is greater than the cost would have been if the necessity for making the modifications and extensions had been foreseen from the first. It may safely be auggestod that the business men who are members of the City Council would not have floundered on from one proposal to another in this manner in the control of their own private affairs. Councillor Cole has mado an alarming suggestion concerning what might happen at Waipori in the event of a Hood, He assumes that a heavy flood might be capable of sweeping away weirs, power-house, machinery, and everything else. Such a suggestion is much to be deprecated, however, if merely an expression of personal opinion on the part of a well-intentioned but nonexpert councillor unsupported by the opinion of any person possessed of engineering qualifications, and Councillor MarWs reply to it was sufficiently reasonable. There is no apparent cause for doubting the stability 1 of the works which ths Corporation has constructed. Upon its financial side, however, the enterprise may fairly be regarded with some degree of uneasiness by all but the most optimistic of the ratepayers. It is to be observed, among other things, that one effect of the relatively enormous increase which the extensions of the electric power system have entailed in tho capitalisation of the Waipori scheme must be to render it doubtful whether the Council can rely upon the Electric Power and Lighting Department to supply the contributions that are expected from it towards the interest charge on the £175,000 loan which has been authorised for street improvements.