By Rhonda Bartle

It was the ever-increasing demand for lighting in the district and the use of milking machines and separators in cowsheds that saw many small power plants built in Taranaki.

Seven of the first 14 public power suppliers in New Zealand were in Taranaki. Most were hydro-electric schemes, built on rivers fed by the mountain, Taranaki.

Though a number of local dairy factories made their own power, either by using waterwheels, small turbines or Pelton wheels, these were solely for their own consumption.

The Hāwera hydro electricity generation station on the Waingongoro River at Normanby was first commissioned in 1903 and ran until 1967, providing 64 long years of power.

Though the Hāwera power house originally supplied power right throughout South Taranaki, in 1932 it became a supplement to the national grid.

Folders full of history

Don Glass of Hāwera was witness to the early days of the Hāwera hydro success story and has gathered its entire history in two folders.

"I worked at the Power Board before and after the war," he explains. "I was taken on as a cadet in 1938. I worked under a draughtsman and when he went down to Southland, I stepped into his shoes."

Working directly under the engineer, Joe Lithgoe, Glass learned quickly and well. He found Lithgoe a good teacher.

"We got on pretty well. All the staff did. Whenever there was a vacancy, someone stepped into someone's shoes. I worked out at the power house, too, for three years."

Lithgoe knew exactly what power production was all about.

"Yes, he had worked on the Grey River development in the South Island and then with the Dunedin and Christchurch city councils. He had a great background."

Glass worked for the Power Board from 1938 until 1941, when he enlisted in the army and then the air force during World War II. When he returned in 1945, he stayed on for another five years.

After the War

Glass stayed in the office from 8am till 5pm and then worked at the power house from 6pm till 9pm. "I worked 12 hour days," he smiles. "But we lived on a pittance."

Though most problems were relatively minor, usually small floods, he says his worst moment came late at night.

"I was on shift work from 2.30am till 9.30am and there was a break on the line 18 miles (30kms) south at Oeo and we fed into the fault and the lights ran down.

"They just went black. I had to dash round and take the three hydro machines off and then later, put them back on the line again. That's a disaster when you're by yourself!"

It was a major flood in 1967 that finally brought a halt to power production. "With young engineers with no experience, they didn't clean out the tail race of the river and the water backed up into the power house and flooded it, and that was the finish."

Today nothing but the dam survives intact, something that Glass laments.

"It was all wrecked and sold as scrap sometime after 1967. I wasn't with the Power Board then so I had no control over it. There's nothing left except for No.3 machine at MOTAT (Museum of Transport and Technology) in Auckland."

He says, "If we still had that machinery today, it would have been of great interest to people. But it was sold as scrap. There's nothing left. No.3 machine was the only thing taken away as a complete unit."

A keen Hāwera historian

Don Glass is a keen historian and has worked with Nigel Ogle of Tawhiti Museum and Hāwera writer Arthur Fryer to help preserve local history.

Despite resistance from so called 'environmentalists' he believes the days of hydro electricity generation are far from over.

"The activists are changing the pattern, but there are probably lots of little rivers that could have hydro on with little or no affect to the environment. All these activists jump up and down. In our day, we just got on with it."

He says the scheme on the Waingongoro didn't damage the river at all. "We just had a dam and there are many places that could do the same thing. With the Waingongoro, it was a mile from where the dam was to the outfall of the power house, so it was a long stretch of water."

He is hopeful that newcomer Brent Scott might eventually set the power house up and running again. "He's a young chap from Australia who plans to get it working again. He's been studying the river flow charts. We used to get 700 kilowatts but he'd get double that."

More power from the river?

Personally, Glass would love to see another hydro scheme operating on the Waingongoro.

"It's such a pity, that with the whole nation short of power, the water is simply flowing over the weir," he says.

And that's where his careful record-keeping comes in. He can supply information relating to the flow of water over many years.

"I have the log sheets from way back…1946…and that gave the flow of the water over the dam with the machines going. It's good information and still relevant."

It's all a matter of overcoming bureaucratic nonsense, Glass says.

"Scott has a set of plans. Everything is designed. The dam is still there though the surge gate is probably getting towards the end of its days. The tunnel is still there. The only thing holding him back is red tape."

And it's of interest to the locals. "At Opunake, they doubled their output by putting in a small unit in a concrete block outside. They don't' use the power house. They've got 700 kilowatt, double what it was originally. They don't use it all the time, but while there's water in the lake, they use it.

"It all adds up. If we had enough water we could run the power house 24 hours a day and that's a lot of units over a year. I think it will happen, yes. I'd like to see it."