Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1940. POWER AND GAS SERVICES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 November 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1940. POWER AND GAS SERVICES.

,, QUESTIONS of great importance to this district were raised in a letter from the Masterton representatives on the AVairarapa Power Board, Messrs 11. P. Hugo and F. C. Daniell, which was published yesterday (and in our early edition today). One of these questions is that of the competition of gas and electrical services. Comment was made recently on the hardship imposed on the people of Greytown by the necessity—one admittedly not to be escaped in existing circumstances —of ■ closing down their municipal gasworks while continuing for years to pay off gasworks loans. The Masterton representatives on the Power Board point out that Masterton. Borough, -with its gas undertaking still loaded with an. unredeemed debt of £56,000, has already had to strike a special rate to return £2,300 per annum to assist in- meeting 1 lie expenses of the undertaking. The Carterton Borough gasworks are at present in a somewhat better financial position, but both the Masterton and Carterton undertakings are exposed without protection to the full effect of Power Board competition. This surely’ must be regarded as a rather anomalons, as well as serious state of affairs, whe.n it is considered that the populations of these two boroughs constitute something like two-thirds of the consumers of electrical power in the Power Board district. It thus falls short of the facts to say that one investment of public money is being used to kill another investment of public money. The actual position is that a very large part of each of these investments is made by the same body of people and that as investors and consumers these people are, as it were, competing against themselves. This is in one aspect a truly Gilbertian state of affairs, but it also entails serious 'waste which surely ought to be minimised to’ the greatest extent that is possible. It is no doubt to be agreed always that the more efficient and popular service, where two services are competing, must eventually occupy and dominate the' field. The conditions, however, in which gas services paid for by the people are being ousted progressively in this district (as, of course, in many others) by an electrical service paid for, in very great part, by the same people, surely are worth considering, with a view to making the change-over as little costly and wasteful as possible.

This question is entitled to more attention than it seems to have been given by the representative authorities in charge of the respective undertakings—the Power Board and the borough councils concerned. The change-over from gas to electricity no doubt must continue, but it certainly may be suggested that the local bodies in charge of the competing undertakings should confer with a view to doing what is possible to obviate waste and at least to modify such losses as have fallen on Greytown and may eventually be incurred on a considerably greater scale by the district boroughs in which gas undertakings are still operating. An effort- to deal in some orderly and methodical way with the problem, whether by an amalgamation of gas and electrical undertakings, or by some alternative policy directed to minimising waste and loss as far as that may be practicable, certainly could not be regarded as premature.