A Million Overboard

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 186, 27 October 1927, Page 10

A Million Overboard

ARAPUNI AND THE TAXPAYER

Estimated Outlay Gone Already

WHEN tlie Arapuni contract was signed just over three years ago, in August, 1924, the -total figure to which representatives of the Government and the contractors appended their signatures was £1.170,891. The job was to have been completed in three years, and the time has already passed. Not a yard of concrete is in position on the power-house site, and £1,200,476 has already been spent, while for current expenditure a further £645,000 is on the estimates.

rpO the taxpayer, who shoulders the burden of the fabulous sums the colossal scheme Is costing, these are statistics of serious trend, and they assume "a gloomier hue from the prediction of the Rt. Hon. Edward Shortt, K.C., legal representative of Armstrong, Whitworth, Ltd., who has stated that someone—the firm or the Government—must lose a million over the contract. Will the loser be the New Zealand Government? Unless an unexpected

concord descends upon the parties, that is a question to be decided in a court of law. The type of protracted litigation that would be involved, with endless appeals and mounting bills of costs, is easy to foresee. Policy of Evasion Mr. Shortt has not hesitated to blame the Government for its reluctance to come to terms with the contractors. The taxpayer may adopt the same viewpoint, but he, whatever happens, is certain to resent the evasiveness with which the Government has dealt with the Arapuni difficulties during the past year. Not until the recent Public Works statement was issued did any Minister or engineer make a candid confession of the difficulty in which the Government was enmeshed. For obvious reasons no hint of the trouble was yielded by Armstrong, Whitworth, but the firm was not slow to begin re-

prisals when the Government had opened" fire. The Government's policy of secrecy was apparently designed to envelop Arapuni in an atmosphere of abiding mystery. Had the Auckland Power Board been sufficiently gullible there might even now have been no confession of the gravity of the situation, nor any provision for meeting it when next winter’s peak load arrives. In the threatened litigation the contractors will endeavour to show that the contract was let in two sections, but in only one contract. They may also point out thatj the plans in the specifications, while revealing ample evidence of trial drives in the vicinity of the dam. show no evidence of corresponding investigations at the power house site. THREE TENDERS The latter section of the undertaking is in the second section. No. 1 being devoted to the dam, diversion tunnel, and headrace. No. 1 section, in Armstrong. Whitworth’s tender, was to have cost £ 610,375, and the other j section £565,087, a total of £1.175,457, which was reduced by close on £5,000 by adjustments made before the document was signed. The other tenderers for the complete undertaking were J. G. White and Co., a world-wide contracting firm which put in the Auckland trams, and whose tender was £1,534.483, and Hansford and Mills. £1.169,157. The departmental estimate was £1.165.277. some £2,000 below the accepted figure. Before that cardinal stage was reached there had been bickering and arguments over Arapuni’s merits as a hydro-electric scheme, and on good authority it may be stated that there was a keen division of opinion among leading engineers, both departmental and otherwise. Many claimed that Aratiatia was the spot at which the works should be built, others that the impetuous Huka Falls should he harnessed. Another proposal, advanced by a well-known Auckland engineer, was that a huge steam power plant should be built at Mercer, where Waikato slack coal could have been utilised, this to serve until the Waikato River projects had been more thoroughly investigated. Meanwhile the Government was building Mangahao, a scheme built by the Public Works Department at more than double the estimated cost; dallying with inexhaustible Waikaremoana, the simplest scheme of all: and countenancing the minor Tariki scheme, in Taranaki, where serious difficulties have been encountered. It is a record which tells its own story. After the specified three years the contractors at Arapuni are putting the parapet on one flank of the massive dam, but down by the power-house engineers are idle while lawyers wrangle.