The Sun FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 1928 SPEEDING-UP AT ARAPUNI

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 263, 27 January 1928, Page 8

The Sun FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 1928 SPEEDING-UP AT ARAPUNI

SO far at Arapuni hydro-electric works, after much delay and heavy expenditure, the State has provided a massive dam, a magnificent lake, and a spectacular cataract. These are proving so popular an attraction to tourists and visitors that politicians soon will want to have them included in the official list of scenic resorts and thrilling wonders. Indeed, the Railway Department might well exploit these new Waikato attractions to full advantage and, before the summer has passed, run special week-end excursions to Arapuni. The profits from such a popular enterprise would at least help the Government to recover some of the big monetary loss on the hydro-electric works. But whatever the value of Arapuni may be to anglers, poets and picnickers, the more practical folk of the community would prefer a quick flow of electric power from the Waikato wonderland. The delay on the works already has been grievous, and there still is little prospect of completion within the next eighteen months or so. It was this pronounced feature of the enterprise which most impressed the members of the Auckland Electric-Power Board, who yesterday inspected the works and gained ready information about the position and prospects. Quite frankly, they were keenly disappointed with the conditions and arrested progress of the work. Though the Government, with apparent generosity, took over from the English contractors two months ago, the difficult contract for the construction of the power-house, without which the gigantic Arapuni scheme would remain a delightful, but unprofitable combination of dam, lake and cataract, the site is still water-logged and a problem for the Public Works Department. Let it be explained in fairness to the State’s engineers that, in the interval, they have not been gazing in bewilderment at the neglected site or twirling their fingers at difficult circumstances. They have been preparing their plans and installing pumps in readiness for tackling the problem with earnest activity, and with confidence in their ability to solve it. If they succeed, their success should be a lesson to the Government and the country that it may not always be necessary to go abroad for contractors. Members of the Auckland Power Board were honest in their willingness to look at the position from the departmental angle of vision, and were delighted to learn that 6ne hundred men will start next week on the excavation of the power-house foundations and will go on working steadily in three shifts a day. Even with daylight saving there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and thus the department could not he expected to do more than it purposes doing to expedite the construction of the power-house. It appears to be practicable, however, to concentrate departmental work on the provision of one turbine of 15,000 kilowatts, before the winter of next year. This the chairman of the board urged upon the department. It is to be hoped that the Administration will not only support this plea with all its weight, but will also accelerate the installation of the special auxiliary generating plant at Penrose. The State can not be dissociated from responsibility for the unconscionable delay at Arapuni, and should hasten willingly to make ample amends for it. Even the prosaic Minister of Public Works assured Parliament last session that it required but little imagination to realise the enormous claims that would in the future be made upon hydro-electric services for power and domestic uses. Such claims are being made now; so much so, indeed, as to compel the State to secure the aid of fuel plants all over the North Island. This is the seventeenth year of State enterprise in the development of hydro-electricity. It is about time that the Government and the department realised the needs of the country and made an end to chronic, inadequate supply of power.