Colonel BESSON. No. The proposed Whitney Reservoir would control the floods of record originating above the dam to harmless. proportions at Waco, but would have no effect on floods originating below the dam, which may at times cause damages at Waco and below.

Mr. ANDERSON. I am thinking also of the whole proposition.

Colonel BESSON. The power benefit is $233,000, which is a little better than the flood benefit there annually.

Mr. ANDERSON. But are not you sacrificing flood-control benefits to a large extent in order to secure power at that point?

Colonel BESSON. I think not, sir.

Mr. LEWIS. What is the demand for power that made you recommend power as one of the elements of this construction?

Colonel BESSON. There is no demand perhaps right today for that power; but, looking into the future, into the development of the power possibilities of the country around there, and into what our studies showed was necessary to put in, our investigations indicate we could use it advantageously for power, but it might be well, before we get these other dams in there that we are talking aboutit might be well to use Whitney Dam up to the whole total height for flood control, until the other reservoirs get in. But that is the big benefit, $233,000, for power alone, which justifies the expenditure for the extra height of the dam. But we would not put that in right away, unless our studies show it was necessary to put it in right away. The CHAIRMAN. Is there anything else?

Mr. POTTS. Mr. Chairman, I know you are getting tired looking at pictures, but I have here a little group of pictures made after the May 1938, flood. There are about a dozen pictures here made at intervals down the line, giving you a panorama from the beginning of the badflood conditions just above Waco, down to the town of Marlin. This is a picture made about 3 miles above town, and this is about 1 mile below town [exhibiting], and shows our raising of the big State and Federal highway bridge.

This is just a mile or so below there [exhibiting].

This is about 2 miles below that [exhibiting].

This is at the confluence of the next tributary below Waco, at Possum Kingdon Creek [exhibiting].

Here are two pictures just showing the farm lands south of Waco and just above Marlin, the next county seat below us [exhibiting]. Here is a picture of the highway bridge leading west to the county seat of the town of Marlin with one span gone, and the balance went in a little while in the 1935 flood [indicating].

The CHAIRMAN. You may leave those pictures with the clerk of the committee.

Mr. POTTS. I will be glad to do it, Mr. Chairman.

Now, as to the situation in the town of Waco and McLennan County, Mr. Chairman, our estimate of losses may or may not have been entirely verified by the investigation of the Board of Engineers. We have never seen their break-down. But there were nearly 900 residences in the city of Waco that were surrounded by water; approximately 200 business buildings, 6 churches, 1 school, part of the campus of the Baker University under water. There was nothing on the west side of the river, but on the south, in each town there was a mile of water on the south side, and agricultural lands in the county were inundated somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 and 60,000 acres.

Mr. ANDERSON. Just what do you call "agricultural lands"-lands that are ordinarily farmed?

Mr. Potts. I mean lands in actual cultivation.

Mr. ANDERSON. It is not just land they can occasionally get in and make a crop on, when the river is low enough?

Mr. Porrs. No, sir; I think the area in McLennan County, under the studies made by the State and Federal Road Bureau, we determined there were approximately 400 units of farm improvements surrounded by water. And we established to our own satisfaction generally that the city of Waco sustained a loss of approximately $4,250,000 in that one flood.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you lose your crops that fall?

Mr. POTTS. Mr. Chairman, it came a little too late to lose all of them. We lost about $150,000 worth of cotton from our compress, which is in this flood area, and we suffered a loss in the amount of cotton that could be picked down below of about $175,000. That was the estimate determined through our best cotton statistician. The CHAIRMAN. That is a cotton area?

Mr. POTTS. That is a cotton area, largely. And that brings this other thought: That area there, gentlemen, the area that was inundated by these worst floods the question was asked and perhaps no specific answer given-was approximately 1,000,000 acres of agricultural land. I mean land in cultivation from Whitney toward the Gulf. It is not the area of the whole thing, but that is the area on which losses were estimated; it is an area that will produce anything that can be grown in that latitude. Mr. Chairman, it is almost as fertile as the famous Delta area of the Mississippi Valley, and is just about as big, or a little bigger-I do not know.

The CHAIRMAN. I am glad you qualified it. [Laughter.]

Mr. POTTS. I put a qualification on the both of them, Mr. Chairman. Now, Mr. Chairman, I know you are pressed for time and I do not want to impose on you at all, but I want to give the committee just a look at this one thing in the engineers' report, and that is a very short profile of this stream. It starts up on the New Mexico border at an elevation of 4,500 feet above sea level. Leaving out half a dozen peaks, it is as high as the tops of the mountains of the Allegheny system. It comes across the big plains and comes on donw and, by the time it gets to Possum Kingdom, the bed of the river is a little below 2,000 feet. Two hundred and forty-seven miles down is the Whitney site, and the elevation of the bed of the river there is 425. At Waco, 38 miles farther down, the bed of the river, at zero on our gage, is 387 feet, and we are 400 river miles from the coast. Now we come down out of that sort of slope and, at Waco, which is right here [indicating], we flatten out, with the Whitney Dam just above and the four intermediate dams in between.

That is our problem. We do not have enough rainfall; we would like to have more, and we need to save our water, as the Congressman said. But, when it hits us, it is very devastating and I know of no stream in the United States that has done the damage and that is deserving of greater consideration and, up to this time, has not been conquered, as the Brazos River. It is the cradle of our Texas Anglo-Saxon civilization. When the first colonists were brought into Texas by Stephen Austin, in 1820, they settled in Austin County, about 100 miles, approximately, down the river from Waco.

The CHAIRMAN. All of those folks lived in Mississippi up to that time?

Mr. POTTS. Well, it happens that Stephen F. Austin came out of Missouri, and they were brought from Missouri more than any other place. But that is the cradle of the thing that has resulted in adding more to the United States than any other one event has done. Instead of a decisive battle, I would like to call your attention to a decisive colony, and the Brazos River was the site, and it is not going ahead; it is going back, if anything.

I do not want to use up more of your time, unless you care to ask questions or I can give some further information.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have had your statement. When you come to revise your remarks, it might be well for you to look up the distance which you gave us along the Mississippi River up to Chicago. You will find it to be a little more than 1,100 miles. It is 1,100 miles up the river, 1,068 miles up to Cairo, and a little farther to Chicago.

Mr. POTTS. I am not talking about river miles.

The CHAIRMAN. You are talking about airline?

Mr. POTTS. I said if you would straighten this river out.

The CHAIRMAN. I thought you said by the river.

Mr. POTTS. Just because I was asked about your Delta, do not get my remarks wrong; I am not running my Brazos against your Mississippi.

The CHAIRMAN. I will excuse you. (Laughter.]

We are glad to have Representative Johnson of Texas present, and we know his interest in flood control generally in that State. Mr. Johnson, do you desire to make a statement?

Mr. JOHNSON of Texas. Not at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. You will make your statement next Tuesday, when we will hear Members of Congress?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now I will call Governor Woodul. Give your full name.

STATEMENT OF WALTER WOODUL, ATTORNEY, STATE OF TEXAS

Mr. WOODUL. My name is Walter Woodul; I am a practicing attorney. I have been in public life in the State of Texas, and I appear here mainly as a trustee of the Sugar Land Industries in Fort Bend County, which is an institution that has been farming land in this overflow portion of the Brazos since 1907.

I do not know there is much I can add to what has already been said, but I come from the southern portion of this area and we are the ones that get the most of all of the overflows brought down there

upon us.

I think the State of Texas, interests are largely spotlighted in the fact they have about 40,000 acres under cultivation in the penitentiary system within this overflow area.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that the institution you are trustee of?

Mr. WOODUL. No, sir-no; we would have been broke long before, if we had been, with the recurring floods causing losses in the operation of the penitentiary system by reason of these overflows year after year.

The loss of life and property caused the State of Texas to take the unusual interest it has taken in this particular Brazos River situation. Now the farming that we had being by private individuals of the Massachusetts trustees, I did not build it up; I merely happen to be the son-in-law of a cotton dealer down there in those days. In the year 1921, he constructed his own levees and drainage facilities to meet the problems of overflow not only confronted from the rainfall there but, when we are overflowed there, it is pretty hard to get any water off of the lands contiguous to the Brazos River, because it takes all of the area for the water that is coming from up above and, to buy insurance, this river organization has spent right up to $600,000 for flood protection of their agricultural lands, and has considered it a valuable investment.

The CHAIRMAN. What are your products?

Mr. WOODUL. We farm everything except small grains. Under the agricultural program, it is a difficult problem to find out what all we can put in and meet the requirements [laughter], but cotton largely, and I might say we had a turn-over in the cannery last year of a thousand tons of spinach. I hope you all eat spinach. [Laughter].

We raise vegetable products. We contend this land is as rich as the Mississippi, and we had Mr. Oscar Johnson to send us an agronomist over there to help us out on our crops. We raise small vegetables and can them, and we can raise most everything there. We used to raise sugarcane, but that has gone out of the picture, on account of the cost.

Now, then, there is one other feature to this. We live in a very vastly growing community-Houston. Maybe you have heard of it. We understand it will come up with your New Orleans in this next census to 450,000 population. We have all of our water supply from underground; we have no above-surface storage and it is thought, when this flood project is finished, that it will have a lot to do with providing a source of water which is certainly going to have to come for municipal uses in Houston.

For the past several years, we have been given a great deal of concern by reason of industries going in there and tapping underground waters, and reducing the water levels. That is one of the things they have not touched on here, but which we think, down the line, will be of major importance.

The whole country south of Waco is very rich land. Our land there is claimed to be as rich as the Nile. I do not know how much richer Mississippi is than the Nile, but we are just as rich as the Nile.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you are wise in getting Oscar Johnson to help you out there. [Laughter.]

Mr. WOODUL. Some of the land, I understand, long before my connection with it, competed with some of the Nile land up in Chicago, in one of those not the last Century of Progress, but in one of the "Progresses" before that, and it competed very favorably with it. The CHAIRMAN. How far is the Brazos River from Houston, on an air line?

Mr. WOODUL. We have the Brazos Valley Irrigation District, which is one of our properties, and we took water from the Brazos and we had two pumps there, one of which could pump as much as the city of Houston used, and we irrigated rice between the city and one of the country clubs at Houston. So it is about 19 miles that

have available possibilities for that purpose; all of the southern end of it.

Most of this testimony is about Waco. This is an integral part of the flood-control system. We are interested also in seeing that they get dams on some of the other rivers there; but, when it is completed, it certainly will help to build Texas to be one of the leading States of the Union. And we chamber-of-commerce people down there feel we can sustain a population, if you give us power and all of those other projects, that would make the United States proud of us down there. I believe that covers about all I have to say.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions by members of the committee?

Mr. LEWIS. There is one question I would like to ask, about the underground water of Houston. Do you mean as to the tapping of the subterranean streams?

Mr. WOODDUL. Yes, sir.

Mr. LEWIS. And you feel that surface storage tends to keep the level of the underground water table high, so that it is accessible?

Mr. WOODDUL. Yes. We are going to have to have it. We are having trouble with it now. In the hot summertime, with watering the lawns and taking baths to cool off, the water pressure is awfully low, and the fire hazard is great. That is by reason of the fact the city is growing and, industrially, the Champion Paper Co. has moved down there, and they use about as much water as the city did in their operations. The city is growing, and it has not a reliable source of water, and large metropolitan areas, like we like to claim for Houstonyou have a lot of other good towns in Texas, but Houston is the only real city require known surface water supplies.

Mr. LEWIS. By the way, you did not happen to be born in California? [Laughter.]

Mr. WOODUL. No, sir; I was born in the scintillating sands of the Rio Grande.

The CHAIRMAN. And you have been living in Houston, how long? Mr. WOODUL. I have been living in Houston since I got out of the Army service in 1919. I went there by request of my father-in-law. The CHAIRMAN. You were very fortunate, I am sure. [Laughter.] What public experience have you had in Texas?

Mr. WOODUL. Oh, I have been a member of the legislature at one time, when I was very young, and I was assistant adjutant general, and I served the public as adjutant general in the Senate, and I presided over some of those birds, as Lieutenant Governor of Texas. The CHAIRMAN. You are not a politician now?

Mr. WOODUL. No; I am through with politics; I am getting acquainted with my family.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have had your statement. Now I will call Mr. Norris. Give your name, residence, and occupation.

STATEMENT OF JOHN A. NORRIS, TEMPLE, TEX.

Mr. NORRIS. John A. Norris; residence, Temple, Tex. My present occupation is chief engineer and general manager of the Brazos River Conservation and Reclamation District.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, the district engineer of the Army and the others who have appeared here have given