Mr. ALLEN. General Crawford, did you have anything to say about this project?

General CRAWFORD. No, sir; I have nothing to add..

Mr. ALLEN. Let the record show that as a ranking member of the committee, and one who has lived in that valley all of his life, I am tremendously interested in this project. It is something for which I have worked for years, and we are delighted that the engineers have worked out what seems to be a very fine comprehensive report, and we are delighted to have this project presented to the committee at this time. I am extremely anxious to have it approved, and to give the engineers the green light to start as soon as possible. At this time I want to present to the committee my very distinguished and very cooperative colleague from Louisiana, Mr. Overton Brooks, who represents the Fourth Congressional District, just north of the Eighth District, and I want to ask him to make such statement as he desires to make at this time.

STATEMENT OF HON. OVERTON BROOKS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

Mr. BROOKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you in particular and all the members of this committee for the cooperation the committee has given. The chairman, Mr. Whittington, has been very cooperative with us, and it is pleasant to be able to present a matter of this magnitude to the committee that has shown the cooperation this committee has shown.

Mr Chairman, this project is of such all-consuming importance to the people of my area that it is hard to describe the importance. Anyone who has dwelled in the valley and seen the floods come and go, leaving in their wake desolation and despair, can appreciate to some extent, at least, the vital, consuming importance of a floodcontrol project such as this one here today.

I happened to be down in the valley in 1945 when this major, this largest of all floods, occurred. I flew over a large part of the water and witnessed from the air the devastation being visited upon our people and their farms down there. I then went with the State Guard because the State Guard was called out, and it did an excellent job in cutting down the loss of life and property, and I went out into the remote areas to see the worse of the flood. I also took one or more boats and in this manner I went over the floodwaters to try to rescue some of those people, and also some of the animals caught in the floodwaters.

Those things are most tragic, and indicate the importance to all of us of such a project as this.

I think in 1945 the worst of the flood fell upon the people of my district, the Fourth Congressional District of Louisiana. It threatened a large part of my home city, Shreveport. It inundated certain outlying parts of the city. It threatened the great Army airport at Barksdale Field, and protection had to be given that field in order that the Army work performed at that air base could be carried on.

I am not going to take the time of the committee, Mr. Chairman, at this time to elaborate further, because we have many witnesses here from Louisiana being heard. But I would like to have an opportunity, at a later date, to extend my remarks further.

I want to conclude by saying that the engineers have done a very fine job on the report, and I want to say that our people are behind this program. They consider it top on the priority list of things to be done in that valley, and I am certainly behind it in every respect.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.

Gentlemen, it has been a very great privilege to me to have present at this very important hearing, the very distinguished senior Senator from Louisiana, Hon. John H. Overton.

Senator Overton was for some years a member of this committee, and is one of the outstanding authorities, we think, on flood control in the Nation. He is certainly one of the best friends the cause of flood control has ever had.

Speaking as a Louisianian, and the one representing the congressional district which Senator Overton once represented, we have very great appreciation of Senator Overton and the fine service he has rendered, and I want now to present to the committee Senator Overton, and ask him to make a statement, if he will.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN H. OVERTON, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

Senator OVERTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much for the very flattering praise you have employed in presenting me to the members of this committee.

I recall with a great deal of pleasure the time that I was a Member of the House and served as a member of this committee.

I have been interested in flood control, actively interested, ever since I have been a Member of the Congress. When I was elected to the Senate, some 13 years ago, I asked for and obtained membership on the Commerce Committee, and was also assigned to membership of the subcommittee considering flood control and rivers and harbors. I shall make a very brief statement.

I appeared before the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors in support of this project. I want to say, incidentally, that at that meeting there was some very good representatives of the Red River Valley who have clearly and emphatically expressed public opinion, that were in attendance. They were unable to be here today, but we have other representatives from the valley. For instance, from Shreveport, we have some, and also of the Red River Improvement Association.

There was also Mr. John Ewing, publisher and director of the Shreveport Times, and he has a radio station, in Shreveport, and Mr. Jacobs, president of the First National Bank, and to show the widespread interest in the project, Mr. Lachlan Macleay, who is president of the Mississippi Valley Association, journeyed from St. Louis to Washington and made a very strong statement in support of this project.

I am perfectly willing to rest my case on the splendid report made by the division engineer, and by the Board of Engineers of the Rivers and Harbors, and by the Chief of Engineers.

I think that report is very full and very complete, and very accurate. If it is to be criticized, it should be criticized because it is somewhat conservative. But that is in line with the tradition of the Army engineers. They always show a conservatism that does recommend their reports to the confidence of any committee to which they submit their reports.

I was born and reared in the Red River Valley. It is a very, very fertile valley. It has a variety of crops. It has various industries. It has fine farms, plenty of livestock, towns, cities, and should be protected against the periodic innundations from which it suffers.

I remember as a boy I think one of the first pieces of hard work, at least, that I ever did manually, I do not know if I ever did any mentally, was working on the levee at Red River to protect my father's farm. I was there with ordinary laborers, and I was 8 or 9 years of age, but I had a spade and shovel, and had to work, doing the best I could.

Now, these floodwaters for some reason or other seem to be increasing. I think the reason is obvious; that is, the flood stage is increasing.

As Congressman Brooks has very well and correctly stated, in 1945 we had the highest flood of record. It caused a tremendous amount of damage.

There should be a comprehensive plan of flood control. It has been taken up piecemeal. What we need is a comprehensive plan. This is a plan that appears to me to be well suited to the needs of the Red River Valley because it combines levee protection and channel rectification and things like that with reservoirs that retard the water and keep it out of the valley during periods of flood.

I think it really does require a combination of both levee work and of the reservoirs to do the job properly.

Now, I certainly hope that this committee will act favorably on this recommendation.

Mr. ALLEN. Senator, I am sure that my colleague, Mr. Larcade, and I are going to do our best to get it approved, and we hope that the members of the committee will go along with us on it.

We are very glad to have your statement, Senator. We feel honored to have you present, and we are very happy to have your statement because of your very wide experience with this subject, and especially with the Red River situation.

Now to get along. We have some gentlemen here from the Eighth Congressional District, which I have the honor to represent.

I want to present those gentlemen for such statements as they wish to make, or file, if they wish to do so, and then it is my intention to ask Mr. Brooks, my colleague from the Fourth District, to present the witnesses from his congressional district.

We have Mr. Pyburn and Mr. Odom, of the Louisiana State Department Engineers. I suppose these gentlemen consider themselves as representing the entire State, which is the proper thing to do.

I think since Mr. Pyburn and Mr. Odom represent the State as a whole, it would be proper to have them at this time, and then I will present the gentlemen from the Eighth District.

Mr. Pyburn, do you have a statement at this time?

STATEMENTS OF DeWITT L. PYBURN, DIRECTOR; AND LEO M. ODOM, CHIEF ENGINEER, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS, STATE OF LOUISIANA

Mr. PYBURN. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Odum, the chief engineer, will present the statement.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Leo M. Odom, chief engineer of the Department of Public Works of the State of Louisiana.

Mr. ODOM. Mr. Allen, I have a short statement here that I want to file. I have just a few remarks.

Mr. ALLEN. Your statement will be filed.

(The statement is as follows:)

STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE RECOMMENDED PROJECT FOR FLOOD CONTROL, MAIN STEM OF RED RIVER, TEX., OKLA., ARK., AND LA., DOWNSTREAM FROM DENISON DAM-PRESENTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS, STATE OF LOUISIANA, TO THE COMMITTEE ON FLOOD CONTROL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 18, 1946

The Red River enters Louisiana at the northern boundary line of the State near the western boundary and runs in a southeasterly direction 370 miles in Louisiana to join the Mississippi River 301 miles above its mouth. It receives one of its main tributaries, Cypress Creek, which rises in Texas, a short distance above the city of Shreveport. All other main tributaries enter Red River above the Louisiana line.

From the Louisiana line to near Alexandria, a distance of 250 miles the Red River averages about 1,000 feet in width and flows in a flat alluvial plain of an average width of 8 miles, flanked on both sides by low hills. Most of the population of the drainage basin in Louisiana is concentrated in this fertile valley. Below Alexandria the river traverses the broad flood plain of the Mississippi River. The river is paralled on each side throughout its length by railroads and improved highways which are important units in the transportation network of the country.

Red River has steep slopes and high velocities and a tremendous variation between flood flows and low flows. Its banks are very soft and cave rapidly. The rainfall along the river in Louisiana averages in excess of 40 inches per annum, but is very irregular with heavy storm rainfalls, when stages in excess of bankfull occur throughout the length of the river, interspersed with draughts, when the flow is so slight that only a few inches of depth are available at the crossings.

Since the earliest days of settlement along Red River levees have been constructed by the local people to prevent overflowing of their lands. At the present time most of the area above Alexandria is protected by such levees. There are nine local levee boards which include practically all of the length of the river within their boundaries.

Levee systems on Red River have two major disadvantages: First, that all of the hill and flat-land drainage must be carried into the river, which necessitates gaps in the levee line at intervals; and, second, that the caving banks constantly menace the integrity of the levee system, requiring frequent expensive set-backs and sometimes crevassing the levees and flooding the country. Another disadvantage to levee protection of the area is the fact that the type of material available for levee construction permits seepage during floods which damages the land in the vicinity of levees worse than flooding, since it takes a long time to get rid of silts that are deposited.

The danger of flooding and the menace of caving banks have been a great hindrance to the development of the valley. The railroads and highways are

put to great expense to try to maintain their facilities and the cities suffer large losses in business when they become cut off.

The Red River Valley has the last large river problem in the country to be given adequatę Federal control. It is a valuable asset to the United States of America with its huge mineral and agricultural production. The local people have gone their limit in trying to protect themselves and about all they are able to do now is to try to keep ahead of the river with levee set-backs and carry on in spite of the disruption of their lives and their businesses caused by frequent crevasses and backwater flooding.

The Army engineers have been studying the problems of the Red River Valley intensively for the past 10 years in order to formulate a comprehensive project for the use and control of Red River. However, there are dozens of Federal agencies to be satisfied in putting together such a project and they sometimes seem to get completely away from objectives in their determination that each one's particular field receive most consideration.

Congress recognized the fact that the delay of the comprehensive report was causing great hardship in the valley and during the disastrous flood of 1945 ordered the Army engineers to submit a separate report on flood control below the Denison Dam.

The report, so ably presented today by General Crawford, is highly acceptable to Louisiana. We are ready and able to furnish the local cooperation features required.

The Army engineers have ably recognized the difficulties of control of the floods by levees and recommended a reservoir system to provide against floods, together with bank protection and stabilization.

If the United States sees fit to invest the money recommended by the Army engineers for protection of this valley, I am sure that you will find that from a national standpoint it will be one of the best investments you ever made.

I would like to point out that this is not just a Louisiana report. Although our losses exceed those of any other State, a greater total of losses was suffered in 1945 in other States than in Louisiana. Red River is an interstate stream and its control is a problem for exceeding the abilities of the individual States. We want to see the comprehensive project for development and control of the waters of Red River go through, finally, as much as anybody. This interim flood-control project will fit in well with such a future project.

There can be no reasonable objection, therefore, to the recommendation that the flood-control features of the future development of Red River be expedited as reported by the Army engineers. The greatest boon to the development of this valley will be relief from threat of disaster and from disaster itself such as is provided in this interim report.

Mr. ODOм. The Red River, although generally mentioned, I think it would be well to point out that 374 miles of that river are in the State of Louisiana, and that along that 374 miles, 250 miles of it runs through a valley about 8 miles wide, which is a very fertile land, and there have been formed in the past within that area nine levee boards that cover both banks of the river and all of them have built some levees.

It is out duty, as you know, to act as engineers and advisers for those boards.

One of the features of the Red River flood control that is probably a little bit different in our State from the other rivers, is the fact that this hill drainage must enter the river, and that when you build levees, you still have to leave openings for the tributary streams. We have no large tributaries below Shreveport, no major tributaries. We have some pretty important tributaries, but they are nothing to compare with the upper ones.

But all along that length in Louisiana we have these necessary openings in the levee line for the streams.

Now, there is no way in the world to keep that backwater from going back up in these openings except by an over-all reservoir proj