HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25735, 5 January 1945, Page 4

HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER

SCHEME FOR CLARENCE RIVER (0.C.) SYDNEY, Dec. 28. Champion of development of the rich North Coast area of New South Wales, Sir Earle Page, member, of the House of Representatives and former Acting Prime Minister, is urging construction of a hydro-electric scheme in the Clarence River Gorge, " comparable with the vast Tennessee Valley (U.S.) scheme.”

Construction, said Sir Earle r page, should be treated as a post-war work of the greatest urgency. Electricity consumption in Australia had increased tenfold in the last 20 years, and there had been no commensurate development of power schemes. He intended to outline the Clarence Gorge hydro scheme in a radio talk he had been asked to make for relay in America and Britain. The scheme, he added, was in many respects a replica of the Tennessee Valley conservation and irrigation project. As in Tennessee, the Clarence watershed rose to a mile high. “ Under regional authority, 12 dams along the Tennessee, generating 2,000,000 h.p. of electric current, had transformed the whole system of agriculture and living conditions," Sir Earle Page said. "In seven years 110,000,000 trees have been planted in Tennessee Valley, and 500,000 acres of farm lands have been terraced to check water run-off. What has been done there can be done in the area served by the Clarence River Gorge scheme. Catchment for a Clarence Gorge dam is more than 6000 square miles, mostly undeveloped, and largely unalienated from the Crown." Main feature of the scheme, said Sir Earle, was that it would link both Queensland and New South Wales electricity schemes.