No Indication Of Generator Site

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31109, 12 July 1966, Page 1

No Indication Of Generator Site

(From Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON, July 11.

The distances and costs involved in the siting of a coal-fired power plant in the lower part of the North Island are well known in the Electricity Department and the Ministry of Works, but no indication is available from departmental sources of which site is likely to be chosen.

The standard reply is: “It’s all in the Power Supply Authority’s report. You’ll have to wait until it comes out” The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake), interviewed after

a Cabinet meeting which lasted until 7 p.m., said the matter had not been discussed.

The Cabinet will have to approve the final choice. Four sites are still known to be under consideration— New Plymouth, Wanganui, Plimmerton, and Buller. Buller would have the advantage of producing power directly on the coal site, but the disadvantage of requiring another complex of Cook Strait cables.

New Plymouth, Wanganui, and Plimmerton are on an arc, the centre of which is Farewell Spit, round which the colliers or coal-bearing barges will have to come if one of these sites is chosen. Residents of Plimmerton and Paremata, which are residential suburbs of Wellington, have already reacted unfavourably. Another objection is that if Plimmerton was chosen, a port would have to be built.

A vital consideration, however, is the distance of the proposed generating site to the nearest point at which the power can be fed into the North Island grid.

Plimmerton (or Hongoeka Bay) is only a few miles from the giant Haywards substation, but New Plymouth and Wanganui are 120 and miles respectively from ' ” T >e, the best feed-in

their areas.