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FLOOD-CONTROL BILL OF 1946

MONDAY, APRIL 8, 1946

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON FLOOD CONTROL,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10:00 a. m., Hon. Will M. Whittington (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order.

There have been no hearings for authorizations for flood control since the approval of the Flood Control Act of December 22, 1944. The President of the United States, as Commander in Chief, eliminated all flood control and all river and harbor works, except to protect defense installations for the duration.

In October 1942, under War Production Board Order L-41, all priorities for materials for dams, flood walls, and other improvements were denied. Floods continued. There were major floods in 1943, 1944, 1945, and there were major floods during the current year thus far. Lives were lost and property destroyed annually. There is usually a major flood somewhere in the United States every year. Flood control sacrificed a great deal to win the war. Now, after the lapse of 2 years, additional authorizations are imperative. Reports have been submitted where projects should be authorized since the passage of the act, approved by the President on December 22,

1944.

Reviews in response to resolutions of this committee and resolutions of the Committee on Commerce have been made in the light of recurring floods. This committee plans to conduct hearings on all favorable reports that have been submitted by the Chief of Engineers as well as on reports that have been transmitted to the Director of the Budget. A schedule of the hearings has been announced and has been published. You will find it in the Congressional Record each day. It is planned to complete the hearings in 2 weeks. All proponents and all opponents of any proposed project or of any proposed authorizations, in accordance with the custom of this committee, will be given an opportunity to be heard on the dates set forth for the consideration of the projects.

Now, at the conclusion of the hearings the committee will determine the amount of the increased authorizations on the projects approved in the previous authorization bills where authorization of appropriations were made for the partial construction of the projects. An adequate shelf of sound projects where the benefits exceed the costs is proposed so that flood control, as among the most desirable and satisfactory of public works, may be expanded in the periods of depression or unemployment to stimulate employment.

This is the first meeting of the committee that has been held during the incumbency of the present distinguished Chief of Engineers of the United States Army. We are to have this morning a statement by Lt. Gen. R. A. Wheeler, the Chief of Engineers, giving us the overall picture, in behalf of the Corps of Engineers. He is present and he will make the initial statement. General Wheeler is accompanied by Brig. Gen. R. C. Crawford, Assistant Chief of Engineers; by Col. E. G. Herb, Assistant Director of the Civil Works Division; by Mr. George L. Beard, Chief of the Flood Control Section; and by Mr. Kenneth J. Bousquet, engineer, of the Corps of Engineers.

General Wheeler, we are delighted to have you with us this morning and to welcome you for the next 4 years.

We are delighted to welcome Mr. Davis, of Tennessee, who retired from the Committee on Military Affairs, to become a member of this committee, and he is a member of the Rivers and Harbors Committee, and I believe this is his first meeting for general hearings. The presence of the members of the committee at the hearing this morning and the presence of the members who attend the subsequent hearings, as they come in, will be recorded as having attended the hearings of the day they appeared. The order will be for the hearings to begin promptly at 10 o'clock each morning, and we want, in the course of the hearings, and following our custom, to give every member of the committee a reasonable opportunity to propound questions to the witnesses. The chairman will probably ask a few questions in the beginning, will undertake to identify, and analyze in general, any proposed project in the report in which that is embraced. The ranking majority member of the committee will then interrogate, initially, generally 4 or 5 minutes or less. If he has a project in which he is interested, the committee will accord him, as well as the other members of the committee, more time, and we will alternate to the minority member of the committee so that in general each member of the committee, in the order as they appear on the committee, will have an opportunity to propound questions that are materially pertinent to the matter under consideration, and after each member has been given that privilege, in accordance with our further custom, the members desiring further questions will have the privilege of doing that in the order named.

Now, General Wheeler, we are delighted to have you, sir, and you may proceed and give us this statement that you desire to submit for our consideration as the hearings of this bill begin.

General WHEELER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

May I read my statement?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. I think the members will be glad for you to pursue that course because we want to get correctly the over-all picture.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. R. A. WHEELER, CHIEF OF ENGINEERS

General WHEELER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, it is indeed a pleasure and a privilege for me to appear here this morning and to participate in the opening session of your hearings on the flood-control bill

of 1946.

During the war years while I was overseas I thought a great many times of the civil-works program and of my many good friends and the

pleasant associations made through my previous assignments on river and harbor and flood-control work. I can hardly express to you how gratifying it was to return and find that although the actual construction of flood-control projects had necessarily been suspended during the war, the over-all program had been steadily moving forward, and that even a few short weeks after VJ-day an appropriation bill had already been passed by the House to provide funds for resumption of the urgently needed flood-control and river and harbor construction work.

Two years ago, in the spring of 1944, when this committee last held extensive hearings on a general flood-control bill, the United States was engaged in winning a great war which had engulfed most of the world. We could not predict its end but we knew that its end could come in only one way-victory for the Allied Nations. Hostilities have now ceased and the victory is ours. I am proud to head an organization which had so large a part in carrying this war to its successful conclusion-the Corps of Engineers of the United States Army.

In our wartime operations we were fortunate in being able to obtain the services of thousands of able men and women who joined our organization for the emergency. I wish to pay tribute to them for their aid; without them we could not have functioned. But the nucleus of the vast organization that made this accomplishment possible is the Nation-wide organization of the Corps of Engineers which has been built up and kept during peacetime by work on flood-control and river and harbor work. Practically without exception the directors and key staffs of our wartime supply and construction operations gained their experience on these same flood-control and river and harbor projects.

It so happened that the war years were also years of severe and widespread floods. The flood-control projects, the completed and partially built dams and levees, prevented stoppages of work due to floods in many war industries, and prevented the flooding of railroads, freight yards, and other installations, thereby holding to minimum the consequential loss in transportation time. The power generated at some of our dams that had been designed primarily for flood control, but which included power installations as directed by Congress, furnished electricity to many war plants.

Now that the war is ended, this country can ill afford to allow the flood-control program to lag. We have gained a victory over the Axis, but we still have a vicious enemy that strikes with the regularity of the seasons. Floods, which may come at any time but which are more prevalent in the spring when the melting snows of winter combine with seasonal rains to fill river channels beyond capacity, annually inundate thousands of acres of croplands and destroy valuable urban property, and occasionally, also cause loss of life.

As part of your extensive hearings in 1944, General Reybold reviewed the flood situation up to that time. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I shall confine my remarks on that subject to a brief review of floods and flood damages which have occurred since then.

During April, May, and June 1944, record high stages were approached numerous times on rivers from Wisconsin and Minnesota south to Texas, and new records were set on many streams. In April the Neosho River in Kansas exceeded its previous maximum stage re

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