VICTORY FOR SKILL AND PATIENCE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19941, 27 October 1934, Page 9

VICTORY FOR SKILL AND PATIENCE

MIGHTY RIVER BROUGHT UNDER CONTROL

Triumph of Engineering Ability Skill and patience have been achieved with the completion of the Waitaki Hydro-electric scheme. Time and again, with the melting of the mountain snows, the waters of the Waitaki river gathered themselves in concerted attack upon the obstruction of the partly completed work, but every such occurrence was met by human resource, and the work went steadily forward to a successful issue. To-day His Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. will set in motion a scheme which will stand as a monument to the engineer who conceivied it; to the organising and administrative capacity of the engineer who had charge of the constructional work; and also to the army of workmen whose combined efforts resulted in the Forces of Nature being conquered. Built at a cost of about £2,000,000 the works are designed to add to the South Island electric power plant a capacity of 115,000 horse-power. This is the power that will be developed when the five turj bines for which the power-house is : designed have been erected. In the meantime only two turbines have been installed, capable of developing between them 46.000 horse-power. The other units will be added as the demand arises. The great concrete dam, which, with wing abutments, is 1880 ft. long and reaches a maximum height of 120 ft., spans the Waitaki River from the Canterbury bank to the North Otago bank, near Kurow. Although the water It will harness will be the means of producing a great output of power, surplus water will pass over the spillway dissipating energy of 1.000,000 horsepower, the flood flow of the river being about six times that of the Waikato at Arapuni. From the power-house on the North Otago bank the transmission scheme embraces a link, at Glenavy, 40 miles distant, with the Lake Coleridge system and another link with the Waipori power station, 40 miles w r est of Dunedin, so that the three systems may run in parallel and place their combined resources at the disposal of Canterbury and Otago.

That briefly is the story of Waitaki and the functions it will serve but on such a memorable occasion, it is essential to delve a little more deeply into the history of what is the greatest hydro-electric undertaking ever attempted in the Dominion.