POWER BY 1935.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 829, 1 August 1933, Page 5

POWER BY 1935.

Speeding Up the Waitaki Hydro Scheme. I MORE MEN TO BE EMPLOYED. j Providing that there is no abnormal | flood within the next four months, the ! work at the Waitaki hydro scheme j should be completed and power generI ated by March, 1935. The work is now being speeded up, and another 100 men are to be given employment almost immediately. The decision to put additional men on to the developmental scheme was made by the Minister of Public Works, the Hon J. Bitchener, yesterday, after he had closely inspected the whole of the gigantic undertaking, which is the largest Public Works job at present in hand in the Dominion.

Simultaneously with the authority to engage another hundred men, the Minister gave his consent to the construcj tion of further hut accommodation for 1 them. Further increases will follow as accommodation becomes available. By the time the work is completed | half a million tons of concrete will i have been put into place to hold the river back, and 600,000 cubic yards of i shingle and rock will have been rej moved from the bed of the stream. A I lake six miles long will be formed at i the rear of the dam. Thorough Inspection, j With the Resident Engineer, Mr R. ! 11. Packwood, as guide, and accom--1 panied by the Engineer-in-Chief of the 1 Public Works Department, Mr C. J. M’Kenzie, and Mr T. D. Burnett, M.P., the Minister spent four hours in seeing every phase of the w'ork. As the work is in Mr Bitchener’s electorate, he is well acquainted w T ith the scheme, and has always been cognisant of the progress made; but as ; Minister in charge of the Department ' responsible for its construction and I operation, he is now more keenly interested than ever. One of Mr Bitchener’s first acts as \ Minister was to arrange for another 300 1 men to be employed, and this had the ; effect of speeding up the work considerably. The further 100 now to be engaged will be employed in shovelling shingle into trucks for transportation to the concrete mixers.

A bank of first-class shingle for con* Crete work has been discovered about a quarter of a mile upstream from the 'dam. In every respect it is the best j in the river, and it is the intention of the engineer to have all this collected and taken to the mixer before the ! spring floods cover it with deep water. When the additional men are on the [ work, the shingle bank will be flood* | lighted and three shifts will be engaged. in the same manner as operations are j carried on at the remainder of the ! works. There are now just on 800 men work* ing on the dam and the power-house, and when the additional 100 are there, the number will approach what it was two years ago, when shortage of funds caused the Government to reduce the number of workmen to about 500. Discussing the progress of the work yesterday afternoon, the Minister said that he was very pleased with the in* creased speed at which it was being carried out. The sooner the work was completed, the sooner if would become revenue-producing, and that was an important consideration in a scheme which involved a capital outlay of something like £2.250,000. He pointed out that while the work was . being pushed on at great the highest engineering standards were being maintained. In fact the plans had j been altered to provide for an even , stronger dam than was ’originally in# ! tended.