WAIPORI EXTENSIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23689, 22 December 1938, Page 10

WAIPORI EXTENSIONS

While the decision of the City Council to put in hand extensions of the hydro-electric works at Waipori was not reached on Monday night without a discussion in the course of which some very unflattering reflections were cast upon the development of this undertaking, no serious challenge can be said to have been offered to its wisdom. Five months ago the Electric Power and Lighting Qommittee reported that the possibility of increasing the supply from the existing main station at Waipori was being considered, and the Council then agreed to obtain the expert report which, it has since received and upon which it has now decided to act. The projected extensions are intended to' afford this community a safeguard against a possible shortage in the power supply. This must in itself be regarded as a very desirable objective. The Council would be open to severe criticism for failure to look ahead and provide against such a contingency should a shortage occur at some not distant date. The danger of a shortage was emphasised some months ago when the general manager of the Christchurch Municipal Electricity Department presented* a report in which he predicted a power shortage in 1939 and a more serious one in 1940. If that report concerned Canterbury in particular it had implications none the less concerning Otago which the Dunedin City Council could not afford to ignore. The southern hydro-electric stations are now so interlocked that the demands of one are not immaterial to the others. The increased requirements of Canterbury from Waitaki may affect the capacity of that station to meet increased or even normal demands from Otago. It has been pointed out that the Government would be within its rights, should an emergency arise, in discontinuing all the supply which Dunedin is receiving from Waitaki. As Councillor Cameron pertinently observed,, " That is a risk we cannot afford to take." Another argument of some weight is that, if the generating power at Waipori is not enlarged, the cost of an increased demand by the Dunedin City Council for electricity from the Government must involve it in very heavy payments in the next few years. The difference between an increase of 7 per cent, and one of 10 per cent, would represent a cost within the next seven years almost equal to that of the extensions at Waipori which have now been decided upon. The Council may claim to have proceeded carefully in this matter, to be showing foresight, and to have reached conclusions which in the circumstances have every apparent justification. Its judgment is not seriously impugned because Councillor McMillan, setting his opinion against that of the Council's consulting engineers, considers that it will be making a big mistake if it does not now proceed to raise the level of the dam at Waipori. Evidently the temptation to vent his acerbity on everybody more or less connected with the development of the Waipori system was one which Councillor McMillan could not resist, but his comments upon the "blundering" and "bungling" associated with the undertaking merely lost their force in the extravagance of their assertion. Mistakes at Waipori there certainly have been, and the City Council and the ratepayers are quite aware of it. But the Council's responsibility in respect of these is» at least not that which it would have incurred had it relied upon the mere opinions of its own members for diagnosis of its requirements. In the matter of the extensions that are considered to be necessary at Waipori, the Council now proposes to adopt the recommendations of its consulting engineers, which have the endorsement of the city electrical engineer and his predecessor. In the past no step has been taken by it at Waipori without expert advice, and, despite what may be said respecting the history of the undertaking, Waipori, as an asset of which this city has reason to be proud, is all that the Mayor has claimed for it.