Drought throws New Zealand into severe power crisis
WELLINGTON — New Zealand’s electricity shortage yesterday hit Members of Parliament who discovered that they now have to walk between offices.
Drought has lowered reservoirs behind hydroelectric dams, which provide 78 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity, to near-critical levels.
Retailers have been adopting a variety of approaches, including turning off hot-water systems, street lights and advertising signs. A large aluminium smelter last week began scaling back its production.
At Parliament, MPs who travel the several hundred metres from the executive wing’s offices to a building housing the debating chamber discovered yesterday that their moving walkways had been turned off.
Parliamentary service general manager Peter Brooks said the move was one of several energy-saving measures.
Prime Minister Jim Bolger said all government departments, ministries and state organizations had been told to cut electricity use by 10 per cent.
He said voluntary reductions in power use could avert compulsory blackouts if the drought persisted.
Commuters in the capital, Wellington, traveled to work in the dark yesterday as street lighting was switched off early.
Electricity Supply Association executive director Barry Leay said weekend measures saw power savings range from 11 per cent in some areas to considerably less in others.
Officials of the state-owned electricity corporation, called into a crisis meeting with Mr Bolger last week, have been defensive over their handling of the shortage.
Chief executive Rod Deane said yesterday that they could not have foreseen the length of the drought which has affected South Island hydro lakes.
Planning was based on handling a drought once every 20 years, he said, but the present dry spell was a "one in 100-year occurrence". — AFP, Reuter.
Source : The Straits Times, June 9, 1992
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