Senator BILBO. We have been at it longer than you have.

Mr. WILSON. Possibly so, but anyway we have spent quite a bit of money.

Senator BILBO. I think the records will show that we have spent out of our own money in the neighboorhood of $50,000,000 in trying to protect our State.

Mr. WILSON. Well, Congress protected it pretty well in 1928, giving you that 3-foot freeboard, do you not think so?

Senator BILBO. Yes. We had it coming to us because we had taken such a keen interest in caring for our own side.

Senator OVERTON. You do not contend that Mississippi spent more on levees than did Louisiana, do you?

Senator BILBO. I was speaking only of Mississippi.

Mr. WILSON. I have been informed that there has been as much as, or more than, $50,000,000 spent on our side of the river.

Senator BILBO. In Arkansas?

Mr. WILSON. By local interests.

Senator BILBO. In Arkansas alone?

Mr. WILSON. On that section of the Arkansas on the Mississippi River.

Senator MILLER. Is there any other statement that you want to make?

Mr. WILSON. Other than to have you tell us what we can do to get our levee built up under the Jadwin plan.

Senator OVERTON. We are in thorough sympathy with you and with your views. I would like to see something done, because Louisiana is just as much interested as Arkansas.

Mr. WILSON. What about the main-line levee?

Senator MILLER. We will maintain that.

Mr. WILSON. When will that be done? We want some action, and I do not believe we can get it other than through this committee. Senator BILBO. With the back-line levee you will be happy?

Mr. WILSON. General Ferguson said yesterday that it would be 6 years before we got the back-line levee. If it is 6 years, any one of those 6 years can break us.

Senator BILBO. He said that possibly because he did not have the money in sight to expedite it.

Senator MILLER. I will ask Mr. Lovett to come to the table.

STATEMENT OF CLYDE LOVETT, LAKE VILLAGE, ARK.

Senator MILLER. Mr. Lovett, where do you live?

Mr. LOVETT. Lake Village, Ark.

Senator MILLER. What is your business?

Mr. LOVETT. My business is ginning cotton, farming, and planting. Senator MILLER. All right. Just proceed to make such statement as you desire to make.

Mr. LOVETT. Mr. Chairman, and Senators of this committee, I am closer under the gun than any witness who has been in the chair yet. It is less than 4 miles air line from my place to this fuséplug levee. In 1927 when the levee broke the water ran into my yard at 9 o'clock, and at 1 o'clock it was 32 inches in my house.

In 1927 I was foreman at the Carmichael levee, across the river from Mounds. We had 8 feet of freeboard, and the water was at

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the top of this levee, and we were expecting it to break every minute. At 4 o'clock that afternoon it broke on the Arkansas River. I had to summon every preacher, Catholic priest, gardeners, laborers, and others to carry sandbags to put on the levee.

In the 1937 flood I was told that we could take care of any water that would pass the Memphis gage provided we could get it below the Arkansas. But what if we had had a high Arkansas and White the same as we had in 1927?

As General Ferguson told you, in cutting these dikes here—these cut-offs it depended on how fast the water was going down the river. I think, as Mr. Jacobs told you, the only one that was functioning 100 percent was the Leland dike. Before the Leland dike was cut the water was 4 or 5 feet higher than on the south side, because the water had an additional 18 or 20 miles to go. I think it has been brought out that the level below the Leland dike is 8 feet lower than on the Mississippi side.

I came here as a private citizen. I am not a lawyer or an engineer. I do not know what to tell you to do in order to take care of the river, but I would merely like to ask for all the protection we can get. Every dollar I have made in my life is right in the mouth of this fuseplug levee. All of my people are right there.

Senator MILLER. Do you think that building the fuseplug levee up to the 1914 grade and section and building a back protection levee is what you would be interested in?

Mr. LOVETT. Yes, sir, I feel so. Mr. Hamley told you that he has a lot of good friends in Arkansas. We have a lot in Louisiana. As I said, with the high Arkansas River in 1937, we would never know how much water we would have got. The only thing I do know is that after the 1927 break the water was over the foothills of Ashley County and the foothills of Yazoo, Miss., across the Mississippi, which is a distance of about 55 or 60 miles.

I fed 500 darkies from 1930 up until now, and I cannot take another 1937 water. Not a one of them went on relief.

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I have got friends in that territory who say they are willing to leave everything to the engineers and ask Congress to give us relief. There are 195,000 acres in the Eudora floodway in Arkansas. We have obtained 140,000 or 150,000 acres in options. I took one man who represents 10,000 acres to Vicksburg last summer to sign his options. I have relatives who own property in that area, and we have options ready to sign which I will say will give them 90 percent. Senator MILLER. You have no objection, of course, to the Morganza?

Mr. LOVETT. None whatever.

Senator MILLER. All we are trying to do is get the water by us? Mr. LOVETT. I believe Representative Whittington said yesterday that we are all the same people and want to be treated alike. As Mr. Wilson told you, we have been in the mouth of this gun for 11 years. We have not been treated right, as he told you.

I want to see all of us have protection. I am not selfish. As I told you a minute ago, we are all the same people, and as Mr. Hamley said, and want to be treated alike.

If the area in Lake Providence is not afraid of this water and they feel they can take their chances, why let them take their chances. Then if they want to come in later, if they are in a big flood, we will be glad to have them.

I want to say that we have cooperated with the Government and have got 75 percent, and we want the same relief that the Morganza is asking for. These people around Lake Providence that have all these very fine fertile lands-they are fine; I have driven over every foot of them. But they are no finer than the land I have and that my friends have in the Arkansas area.

We are not objecting to anything that they want to do that will give us equal protection in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Senator OVERTON. In other words, you advocate protection all around?

Mr. LOVETT. Yes, sir, to be fair to everyone. I am like Mr. Wilson. It has been 11 years now. They tell us that the average number of years between floods is 7 years, and we are 4 years overdue. Senator OVERTON. The committee will stand recessed until 2 o'clock.

(At 12:25 p. m. a recess was taken until 2 p. m. of this date.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

At 2 p. m. the hearing was resumed, pursuant to recess.

Senator OVERTON (presiding). It is now 2 o'clock. The committee will come to order.

Mr. Whittington, whenever you are ready to proceed we will be glad to hear you.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. WHITTINGTON, THIRD DISTRICT, MISS.

Representative WHITTINGTON. Mr. Chairman, I am very appreciative of the courtesies of the committee and of the chairman.

My name is William M. Whittington, Representative, Third District, Miss., which includes substantially the Yazoo Basin in the alluvial valley of the Mississippi River.

I am now and have been for the past 13 years a member of the Flood Control Committee of the House of Representatives. I live in the central portion of the Yazoo Basin, and as a citizen and as a public official I am fairly familiar with the problem of flood control in that basin and in the alluvial valley.

The flood of 1927 demonstrated once and for all that the policy of levees only established theretofore was inadequate, and under the Flood Control Act of 1928 levees were supplemented by floodways, and diversions, and I speak particularly respecting the diversions through the middle and the lower sections.

Under the act of 1928 provision was made for, diverting approximately a million cubic feet through the fuseplug or Boeuf diversion. Provision was made, in the lower section south of Old River, for diverting approximately a million cubic feet, 500,000 feet on each side of the Atchafalaya.

In 1928, and continuously since, I advocated compensation for damages, including lands and flowage rights in all diversions.

The fuseplug was the result of the best compromise, respecting the diversion in the middle section, that we were able to obtain in 1928. It has not been completed, and I take it that it will not be completed and that Congress has so recognized, for two reasons, as assigned by

the Corps of Engineers. They were of the view that no provision was made for compensation in the Boeuf or other fuesplug diversions under that act, because under the language of section 4 of the 1928 act, it was maintained that no additional floodwaters were conveyed through that area. That view was, I take it, recognized and approved by Congress, because in the Overton Act of 1936 provision was made for compensation in the fuseplug section on the west side of the Atchafalaya in the southern basin.

If I may be permitted to say it, Mr. Chairman, I supported and cooperated with you and the other advocates of flood control in the States affected-Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi -and with the Senators and Representatives in the passage of the Overton Act. I appeared before the committee. I advocated the terms of the act, as did Senator Overton. Our testimony speaks for itself, and I refer particularly to section 12, which authorized the Chief of Engineers to acquire flowage rights in the diversion.

During the course of the hearings, and as previously reported, the Chief of Engineers submitted an amendment that provided in substance that upon the acquiring of voluntary options for 75 percent of the values in those floodways, he would agree to condemnation for 25 percent. That was a rather long amendment. It appears in the hearings, and that amendment was grouped and was adopted as part of the Overton Act because we were unable to obtain-I speak for myself, at least-the approval of the Chief of Engineers at the time for straight power of condemnation in that area.

The two were united, not for engineering purposes, but in order to secure the authorization of both.

Senator OVERTON. Would you object to an interruption?

Representative WHITTINGTON. I would like to complete my statement and then have you ask questions, but if you would like to ask a question now, I will be glad to have you do so.

Senator OVERTON. Just for an instant.
Representative WHITTINGTON. Yes.

Senator OVERTON. The suggestion of the Chief of Engineers was not to link the Eudora.

Representative WHITTINGTON. I did not state that. I was very careful not to state that.

The Chief of Engineers, as shown by pages 46 and 47 of the hearings of January 27, 1936, on the Overton bill, S. 3531, submitted an amendment in lieu of section 12 of your amendment, and that amendment provided that in each of the diversions, if there should be voluntary options for 75 percent, he would agree to condemnation for the remaining 25 percent.

The committee utilized that view and united the two, because, Mr. Chairman, it was evident then-it is more evident now-that there should be no diversion or floodway primarily for the protection of another State or of another area that can be voluntarily furnished by the people whose property must be taken, so that while not united engineeringly, there was provision made for condemning flowage rights in the New Madrid area primarily to protect Cairo. There was provision made for the condemnation of lands in the Bonnet Carre spillway to protect the city of New Orelans.

My thought was in 1936, and is now, and we have tried it for 12 years, that there would never be a voluntary agreement for the

condemnation, either through the Boeuf or for the Eudora. However, in an effort to cooperate, in an effort to secure a completed project, we united the two in 1936. We never opposed the Morganza. What we were advocating was the Eudora in that act and protection for the area in Arkansas. It was thought that uniting the two-I am speaking now from my viewpoint would better serve the interests of the entire valley because in all the years that the Federal Government has passed legislation, no matter how important it was to Mississippi or to Louisiana, the Government has never selected one city or one State and provided for the project that would give protection to that area. In 1928 there was an entire project for the entire valley, and while the building of levees in Louisiana was not united with the building of levees in Mississippi, and while the floodway at Bonnet Carre was not united with the floodway at New Madrid, both were provided for; and we left with the engineers then, as I am quite content to do now, the order in which the work, should be constructed.

I might add, in all fairness, that personally I would have thought that the Bonnet Carre spillway for the protection of New Orleans would take priority over the New Madrid; that is, down near the mouth.

They were constructed, and I went over the New Madrid floodway before we built the Bonnet Carre spillway. That was referred to the engineers.

If I may be permitted to say it, I never counted dollars for Arkansas or Louisiana or any other State. Personally, I do not think the Government has spent enough in Louisiana, and I do not think it has spent enough in Mississippi. I have never complained because most of the money under the act of 1928, and I am not complaining now, was spent in Louisiana. We have twice as many levees as there are in any other State in the Union, and it should have been spent there.

I cooperated with you, sir, when you were on the committee in the House, in passing the legislation which authorized the Federal Government to pay for the first levee on a tributary. I cooperated and went on down the line and made endorsements for the set-backs, and most of it went not to Arkansas, not to Mississippi, but to Louisiana. I think it may be said that we cooperated.

Now, Mr. Chairman, we appear here because here is a bill that has been submitted after experience of 2 years. Flood control is not static. We had the flood of 1937, and the experiences of the flood of 1937. Reference was made here by the engineers to the fact that in the Morganza, in the fuse-plug levee, there was a freeboard of 21⁄2 feet. I remind you that above the Arkansas River, in the Yazoo Basinyou gentlemen are here to speak for Arkansas-there were levees where the water was 21⁄2 feet from the top of the levees.

I am for making good all of those deficiencies, whether they be in Arkansas, Louisiana, or Mississippi.

Now, Mr. Chairman, with respect to Eudora, I believe that all, engineers and laymen, are in accord with the statement that merely divorcing those two projects will not suffice. You have got to go further. The Chief of Engineers stated that divorcing them and constructing it at 49 and not using it at 55, as it was in 1937, would not be enough. We would need legislation to give to the people of the Morganza area the relief that they are entitled to.