The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JULY 1, 1930 MUST THE PUBLIC PAY FOR ARAPUNI?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1012, 1 July 1930, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JULY 1, 1930 MUST THE PUBLIC PAY FOR ARAPUNI?

A IiAPUNI’S collapse lias thrown the Auckland Province back to the position and plight it was in ten years ago in respect of the supply of electricity. It again has to depend on fuel plant for generating electric power, and will be hard pressed for a long time to meet the demand for clean and quick energy. Indeed, the province never has had enough electricity, and its prospects are worse than ever through the abrupt and almost hopeless failure of Arapuni as a great source of hydro-electric supply. These are the actual circumstances today, and the community had better realise the truth and be prepared to make the best of a lamentable business. “Our progress has been our undoing,” declared the chairman of the Auckland Power Board at a Government conference on the subject at Wellington yesterday, and in making that plaint Mr. W. J. Holdswortli said almost everything anyone might say about this community's exceptional difficulties. Since the board's inception the expansion of its service has been nothing short of phenomenal. With a perfect faith in the delayed advent of Arapuni the board built up a big load, and guaranteed a demand which promised a fortune for the State. The installation of the first generator at Arapuni was estimated to yield a revenue of not less than £IOO,OOO a year. Now, the board lias been driven back upon its own resources apparently without any prospect of adequate compensation for the heavy additional expense that must feo involved in plantextension at the King’s Wharf. It is faced with a loss this year of any sum between £50,000 and £60,000. This means a temporary end to tlie board’s profits, asd an indefinite defei'ment of! more substantial concessions to its consumers who, awaiting the service of the Waikato enterprise, paid a fairly stiff price for electric power without serious protest. The conference of power boards with the Minister of Public Works and departmental officers at Wellington disclosed the seriousness of the provincial outlook as regards providing substitutes for Arapuni. It is true that the Government demonstrated its willingness to co-operate with the various boards concerned, and to bear a share of the emergency expenditure, but, the Minister was unable to guarantee that the proposals would suffice to meet the increasing demand for electric power. Mr. Taverner pointed out that no one could estimate the period of emergency. Arapuni certainly will be useless for a year at least; it may remain out of action for two years; many people fear that it will have to be abandoned as New Zealand’s biggest millstone. Today, on paper, there is a small margin of power. Little dependence need be placed upon that calculation. Experience in the past decade lias proved that such estimates of the prospective demand for electricity were never at any time or place worth the paper they were written on, for always and everywhere the demand overpaeed the supply. So far, it has been decided definitely to instal two steamplants—one by the Auckland Electric-Power Board at the City waterfront, and the other by the Government on the Waikato coalfields at Huntly. Each will be capable of generating 15,000 kilowatts, and the combined cost of installation will exceed £300,000. But these emergency plants cannot be brought into commission within about a year at the earliest. No doubt, the arrangements are the best that can be made in the circumstances, but these are so precarious that nobody will have the heart to enthuse. The Auckland plant is running to the limit of exhaustive strain upon machinery, and may not get through the long period of emergency without a breakdown. It may yet be necessary to impose restrictions. In the meantime the board again has revealed and exercised its resourcefulness, but it should not he called upon to incur a tremendous financial loss. As Mr. Holdswortli has phrased it, “without King’s Wharf Auckland electrically would be a dead city.” It is going to cost a lot of additional public money to keep it electrically alive. The responsibility for the extra cost should, in fairness, be shared by the State. Is it not the failure of the State’s enterprise that has precipitated the province into acute and expensive difficulties? It is not reasonable to suggest that the collapse of Arapuni is an “act of God” which should be paid for hv the users of electricity in Auckland.

UNWIELDLY LOCAL GOVERNMENT

ALTHOUGH Auckland City and its adjacent areas are mingling rapidly and developing into a single unit of population, its local bodies show no sign of acknowledging this trend; nor do they betray any willingness to face its inevitable result. A few decades ago the various boroughs on the isthmus and the North Shore were more or less sharply defined —geographically and in administrative requirements—but swift development has put an end to this parochial isolation. Today boundaries are familiar only to a small army of borough engineers, inspectors, and general employees whose tasks and responsibilities begin and end within enclosures marked obscurely by surveyors’ pegs. Outwardly Auckland is a co-ordinated city, but it continues to be governed by local bodies on a pre-war system. An appeal for the abolition of this costly and cumbersome anomaly was made last evening by Mr. T. Bloodworth, who informed an audience at the University College that Auckland harboured no fewer than 21 governing bodies with a total membership of 297 persons, all of whom were elected every two years. He might have added that, in the employ of these bodies were upward of 100 executive officials, not to mention 21 groups of permanent and casual workers. Such a multiplicity of control, be said, led to confusion, delay, and, to a certain extent, waseful expenditure, with the result that few people were ever satisfied. In expressing this opinion Mr. Bloodworth was merely drawing attention with commendable and necessary frankness to existing facts. Under such conditions, overlapping of control has become a commonplace and the result is extravagance in expenditure. Business men who arc making a point of investigating local body indebtedness in New Zealand, and who are seeking ways and means of effecting economies, need not look beyond Auckland. Considerable savings can be made the outcome of an impartial revision of local body control without recourse to the curtailment of productive and progressive works. The remedy that should be applied without delay is obliteration rather than the co-ordination of existing imits of control. What is wanted urgently is a drastic reduction in the number of Auckland governing bodies, a clearer zoning, and an abolition of piecemeal programmes of work. The North Shore with its four bodies, 40 governing members, and quadruples of executive offiicials—all suppoi'ted by a population barely sufficient to meet minimum city requirements—is an example of the preposterously unwieldy condition of local government existing today. When the number of authorities has been reduced by half, the way will be clear for the consideration of future metropolitan board control on the lines suggested by Mr. Bloodworth. In the meantime the overhead expenses of local government in Auckland should he reduced speedily by an elimination of overlapping and multiple endeavour.