WATERFALLS THAT WORK FOR THE PEOPLE
How much do you pay for the electric current that lights your home and
runs your heater, vacuum cleaner, and washing machine? In Washington
I am charged ten cents a kilowatt hour, and unless you are especially
favourably located I venture your bills are figured at about the same
rate. To be sure, the monthly expense is not great, but wouldn’t you
feel free to use more electricity if your bills were cut down one half
or two thirds?
That is just what has happened to hundreds of thousands of people in
southern Ontario, and I have been devoting the last couple of days to
finding out how it was done. I have made a special trip from Toronto
to Niagara Falls, and am now writing almost in sight of those mighty
waters. I have visited the world’s biggest power station and talked
here also with the engineers of the Ontario Hydro-Electric Power
Commission, which sells the current to the public at cost. Again I am
impressed with the enterprise and the courage of the people of this
province, and the way they use their government to get what they want.
Canada’s water-power is, as you know, among her chief assets, and
the Dominion is one of the greatest water-power countries on earth.
Although the United States has more hydraulic power available for
development, yet in proportion to her population Canada actually uses
three times as much as we do. She has in her rivers and streams a
total of about eighteen million low-water available horse-power, of
which about one sixth is now being used. Quebec and Ontario possess
between them nearly two thirds of the total water-power resources, of
which Ontario has the larger amount developed, and Quebec the more
in reserve. These two provinces, like the eastern United States,
contain also the greater part of Canada’s industries, seventy per
cent. of which are now run by water-power. This cheap power is one
of the principal reasons why Ontario and Quebec do most of Canada’s
manufacturing and have so many American branch plants.
Ontario’s biggest single water-power is in the waters of Niagara Falls.
As you know, the Niagara River connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. It
forms also a part of the boundary between the United States and Canada.
For many years commercial power companies have operated on both sides
of the Falls. By treaty, Canada and the United States have limited the
commercial use of the Falls, and have fixed the amount of water that
can be diverted from them at twenty thousand cubic feet a second on
the American side, and thirty-six thousand feet on the Canadian side.
This apportionment was made because the major part of the Falls is on
Canada’s side of the boundary, and much power is imported by the United
States from Canada. The engineers say that if the governments will let
them they can divert much more of the water in such a way that the
beauty of the Falls will not be impaired.
The Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission has revolutionized the
situation on the Canadian side. The Falls have been put to work
directly for the people, private corporations and profits have been
eliminated, and, through the building of a giant new power station,
the mighty forces of the falling waters have been made more productive
than ever before. The Commission is distributing Niagara power to
points two hundred and fifty miles away, and in addition is operating
more than twenty additional power producing stations. It has built up a
super-power system that covers southern Ontario. It also supplies power
at the head of the Great Lakes. Through it more than three hundred
cities, towns, and smaller municipalities are supplying themselves with
power “at cost.”
The Commission is the world’s largest publicly owned power enterprise,
having assets worth two hundred and fifty million dollars. It is
claimed that nowhere else on earth do so many people, spread over so
large a territory, enjoy such low-cost electricity as is the case
under Ontario “Hydro.” It distributes six hundred and fifty thousand
horse-power in electrical energy, and, when all its present projects
are in full operation, the daily output will be more than a million
horse-power. Canada’s coal bill would be three hundred million dollars
a year more if “Hydro” power were produced by fuel from mines.
I can make you see in a flash just what all this means to the people.
Below the mists of Niagara Falls the river is crossed by the Railway
Arch Bridge. Half this bridge is lighted by an American company, and
the other half by the current from the Canadian side. The lighting
load for the lamps is the same in both sections, yet the cost last
year of lighting the Canadian portion was one hundred and ten dollars,
while the American company charges at its regular rates totalled two
hundred and forty. Now you know why citizens in Ontario go to the polls
and vote their municipalities into partnership with “Hydro,” as the
Commission is popularly called.
The “Hydro” was created because the towns of southern Ontario felt
that they were not getting the full benefit of Nature’s great power
station at their doors. They then secured a charter from the provincial
legislature at Toronto to form a partnership for the purpose of
buying power and selling it to themselves. The Ontario Hydro-Electric
Commission was created to handle the business. In 1910 it began
operations by distributing one thousand horse-power, purchased under
contract from a commercial company at Canadian Niagara. Four years
later it was selling seventy-seven thousand horse-power, and in 1917 it
purchased outright the company from which it had been buying current.
Meanwhile, more and more cities and towns were joining the partnership,
additional power stations were being bought and built to supply the
growing demand, and as consumption rose rates went down. The provincial
authorities are now talking about a shortage of power in the near
future unless the scheme for building dams and canals along the St.
Lawrence is started at once.
I am told the operations of “Hydro” have not cost the taxpayers of
Ontario a cent in interest charges or capital investment. The whole
scheme actually pays for itself as it goes. This is how it is done:
The provincial government acts as banker for the Commission, loaning
it money with which to build power stations and transmission lines.
These loans are covered by the pledges, in the form of bond issues,
of the cities, through the Commission, to meet the interest and make
repayment of the capital investment. Each city issues twenty-year bonds
for its local central station and distributing system. Payments on both
interest and principal are met out of each year’s receipts, so that
eventually the entire power system will be free of debt. Nearly fifty
cities, in fact, are already in the clear on their investment, and each
year brings others to the same situation.
The basic principle of “Hydro” is a partnership of municipalities
to obtain power at cost. The Commission makes all the expenditures
necessary to develop power and deliver it to the cities. It determines
the rates at which the cities may re-sell the power to local consumers.
Each year the probable cost of power is estimated for each city, with
allowances for interest, depreciation, reserves, and contingencies.
This fixes the rates for the next twelve months. At the end of the
year, the actual cost is calculated. If the expense has been more than
the rates previously fixed, the cities are called upon to make up the
difference; if the cost has been less, the partners get rebates on the
year’s bills.
When I looked for the directing mind behind all this amazing
development, I quickly found it. It is in the person of Sir Adam
Beck, formerly a box manufacturer of London, Ontario, and the only
chairman the Commission has ever had. He is one of the most popular
figures in all Ontario, and it is largely to the organizing genius and
driving power of his personality that the success of “Hydro” is due.
He sits in Parliament, where he keeps on the alert for the welfare of
the Commission’s work, and manages in person its relations with the
provincial government.
[Illustration: The Niagara Peninsula, along the north shore of Lake
Erie, is one of the finest fruit-growing districts in the world. Among
other advantages the farmers here have cheap power from the Ontario
“Hydro”.]
[Illustration: The big ditch that feeds the giant power station was cut
through solid rock for miles and carries a stream of water thirty-nine
feet deep and fifty feet wide, or more than the flow of a river.]
[Illustration: A bucket of water dropped down this cliff to the Niagara
River would strike with the force of thirty horse-power. Imagine 20,000
buckets dropped every second and you have the capacity of this 600,000
horse-power station.]
The cold facts about “Hydro” make it easy for Sir Adam to demonstrate
its achievements. In his home town of London, for example, where
formerly the monthly consumption of electricity averaged less than
twenty kilowatt hours for each household, seventy-five kilowatt hours
are now used. To an extent formerly undreamed of, power has been put
into the homes of the people, and they are using electric appliances in
far greater number than persons of similar circumstances in the United
States. Electric cooking stoves are being installed in southern Ontario
at the rate of one thousand a month. Workingmen’s wives have toasters,
electric washers, electric fans, electric heaters, curling irons, and
everything else the appliance companies can devise.
The Commission is especially proud of the way it has taken electricity
out to the farms. Private companies usually find rural extensions too
expensive, on account of the long distances between installations, and
the relatively small volume of current used. The Commission has now
enough rural lines to reach from New York to Atlanta, and it serves
as many country homes as there are people living on farms in Rhode
Island. Although the rates are higher than in the cities, I find that
a farmer can light his house and barns, run an electric stove and
household appliances, and a three-horse-power motor besides, for from
six to eight dollars a month. The farmers of Ontario can afford to use
electricity to run their pumps, separators, churns, milking machines,
saw-mills, choppers, and threshers--not because they are richer than
other farmers, but because of low-cost power.
I have before me a schedule of the rates charged in the twelve largest
cities of the province. For domestic service the average net cost
ranges from 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour to 2.8 cents per kilowatt
hour. The rates vary chiefly with distance. Toronto, ninety miles from
Niagara, pays 2.1 cents per kilowatt hour, while Windsor, two hundred
and fifty miles to the west, opposite Detroit, Michigan, is charged
2.6 cents. Commercial users, such as stores and office buildings, pay
slightly higher rates, while factories are charged from $11.75 to
$28.66 per horse-power per year. As with commercial companies, the
“Hydro” rates decrease with the amount of power used. For households
the secondary or larger-user rate is nowhere more than 1.8 cents, and
in most places it is less. In Toronto, the average household electric
light bill is less than a dollar and a quarter a month. At Windsor
it is less than a dollar and three quarters. In the city of London,
Ontario, the household consumption of electricity has under “Hydro”
increased more than four hundred per cent. and the average cost has
been reduced to less than one fourth of the former charges.