CUTTING A GASWORKS LOSS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 October 1940, Page 4

CUTTING A GASWORKS LOSS.

f)N the facts of the position, the Greytown Borough Council appears to have made the only decision that was possible when it decided, at its meeting on Monday evening, to close down its municipal gasworks. Under that decision, howeiei, a considerable hardship is suffered by the town and its ratepayers. The gasworks made a loss last year of approximately £782 but with the undertaking closed down, Greytown will have’to find a sum of £595 17s lOd annually for the next eight vears and afterwards an amount of a little over £3OO a year for a further period, until the last of the gasworks loans has been repaid. Some further expenditure will be incurred also in compensating the individual owners ol gas appliances.

An undertaking once reasonably prosperous Jias been brought to this unfortunate pass by the competition of the electrical service administered by’ the Wairarapa Power Boaid. It is not, of course, suggested that any odium is thus cast on the Power Board, which is simply doing its duty in extending its services as widely as possible. Some questions may reasonably be raised, however, as to the wisdom of allowing one undertaking financed, with public money’ io cut the throat, as it weie, of other undertakings also financed with public money. These questions all the more need and deserve consideration since there is no assurance that the Greytown gasworks will be the only ones to go down in competition with electrical services. Although the gas industry on the whole is still expanding—the quantity ol’ gas sold in the Dominion showed a tairly substantial increase’in 1939-40 as compared with the preceding year—no doubt there are other gasworks that are experiencing difficulties and some even of those that are not imminently threatened with extinction must be affected detrimentally by the factors which have made it necessary to close down at Greytown.

It is of course desirable that people in this district and in other parts of the Dominion should get the benefit ol the best, available service, but evidence appears d a certain lack 01. foresight and neglect of common sense in the conditions, in which an undertaking financed with public money, is being allowed to wipe out or undercut others also financed with public money. That electrical power should, up to a point at all events, continue to oust gas in the field ot household service no doubt is inevitable. It is a question, however, whether the process of substitution, in the extent to which it is bound to proceed, might not be organised and co-ordinated, with advantage Io the community in general, in such a way as to reduce to a minimum the waste and loss entailed. If might even be argued that there is a case for amalgamating electrical and gas services, al all events'where the latter are publicly owned. A planned change-over from gas to electricity, where it is advisable and desirable, probably might be carried out over a reasonable term of years at considerably less cost to the community than is entailed in the unrestricted competition of which the Greytown gasworks and Greytown ratepayers are the latest victims.