Radio Station At Lake Taupo

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 30, 8 December 1950, Page 4

Radio Station At Lake Taupo

- A radio station which is listened to attentively these days is ZLPQ, situated on the Tongariro River, five miles from where the river flows into Lake Taupo. Four times a day it automatically sends out a message teling how much water is going down from the mountains. The reason for this, of course, is that the water will ultimately turn the generators of the hydro-electric stations on the other side of the lake. Listening to the radioed measurements are State Hydro-electric Department men at the Claulelands load dispatch office. They can estimate future rise or fall in the lake’s level because the Tongariro River (or Upper Waikato River) accounts for nearly all the inflow to the lake. The radio station is the only one of its kind the Department uses. At Cobb River, Nelson, it has another automatic measurement station which records to within a fortieth of a foot, but this one is linked to a telephone, as is the Wellington City Council’s gauge at Karori Reservoir. The Department’s goal is to establish a central recording statiofl which would present an array of measurements showing the exact water storage position in the country—but more important works have priority.