obligations, interest on bonds, schools, etc. On a low valuation the millage tax would be proportionately higher than it would be on a high valuation.

May I here submit that there is a practical basis for value of these improved lands in question. Many loans have been made by the Federal land bank and the insurance companies in this section. Take some of the appraisements of the Federal land bank within the past 2 or 3 years-appraisements made within the period of the depression. I am confident, operating upon an injunction to hold values down on account of the depression, it will be found that the appraised value of these improved lands is around $50 per acre. Aside from the land improved, as heretofore mentioned, there are two other classes of land in the area in question of definite difference in valuation. This land cannot be fairly classed and valued as "uncultivated land." It should be classed and valued as " second-growth and cut-over virgin timberland."

The second-growth land is that part of the ante-bellum plantations that has not yet been reclaimed but is arable, and when cleaned and developed is of equal value to those lands now in cultivation. Their fair value is that of the land in cultivation, less the cost of development, from $15 to $25 per acre. This acreage area can be easily determined, as it is not large. The remaining area, uncultivated and here classed as cut-over virgin timber land" is possibly 50 percent of the area under discussion. It has but little productive value, and is composed largely of large tracts that were purchased by mill and timber interests, the timber removed from the land, and considerable of it permitted to go back to the State for taxes. Possibly $5 per acre would be a maximum value for land of this character, as it is not arable, and can never be brought under cultivation except at a very large (prohibitive) cost. There may be some land within the last class that could be developed, but this acreage would be comparatively small.

If the land within the area is to be classified and valued, I submit that the improved land should have a minimum value of $50 and a maximum value of $75 per acre.

The second-growth land should have a maximum value of $25 per acre and a minimum value of $15 per acre. The cut-over timber land should have a maximum value of $10 per acre. Much of it, as stated, is of nominal value. If I may conclude with a personal reference, and mine is a typical case: About 30 years ago, and at a time when there were neither roads nor bridges in what I have designated as the "back country ", I purchased 1,048 acres, a part of what was known as the "ante-bellum Berry plantation ", lying for 11⁄2 miles along Joes Bayou, and through which ran an old abandoned public road. Of this land, 800 acres was second growth, lying on the east side of Joes Bayou and 248 acres lying for 11⁄2 miles along the west bank of said Joes Bayou. I was the first white man pioneer who started development in this back country. The purchase price of the 1,048 acres was $8,000. It was a tract selected by me as the best prospective farm acreage in that section. Five hundred and forty acres of this land is within the Tensas drainage district, the drainage tax being 50 cents per acre, $270. I have cleared about 300 acres of this land, further development being retarded by the depression and other financial difficulties. This land was assessed at $30 per acre for the land in cultivation, and $8 per acre for that not in cultivation. Recently, by reason of the depression, and without request from me (the action was general as to all land in that section), the assessor has reduced the assessment to $20 and $5 per acre. Thus, I have 300 acres assessed at $20, or $6,000; 748 acres assessed at $5 per acre, or $3,740, a total of $9,740; only $1,740 more than I paid for it 30 years ago, located as it then was in a wilderness.

Now I have a gravel highway through the place; another highway being constructed into the present highway; the Tensas Drainage Canal, giving perfect drainage for 800 acres; have cleared 300 acres; have 10 good cypress houses on the land; fencing, ditching, etc. I have expended in development easily from twelve to fifteen thousand dollars. One and one-half the assessed value of this land would give me $14,610, far less than the land and improvements cost, and the sales and loan value of my land will be absolutely destroyed. In a recent application for a loan of $20,000 to the Federal Land Bank of New Orleans, I was tentatively offered a loan of $12,000 on the 300 acres in cultivation, with 200 acres second growth added. As the appraisers of the Federal land bank are largely limited in their appraisement to the value of land in cultivation, this appraisement must have shown a valuation on the 300 acres of land in cultivation of around $60 an acre. The committee can

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easily get this and other appraisements in that section upon request to the Federal land bank in New Orleans.

I submit that the following should be included in the bill for the protection of the landowners within the spillway area:

1. Payment upon a fair value for the land according to its classification and values as hereinbefore set out, for the spillway right.

2. Assumption by the Government of all bonded indebtedness imposing a lien upon such lands.

And for such other relief as the Congress may deem those dedicating their land entitled to. They should have fair and liberal consideration.

Your respectfully,

HARRY PEYTON.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Jacobs, you asked permission to make a statement to the committee?

Mr. JACOBS. I want to make this statement to the committee with respect to Mr. Whittington's question to Senator Ransdell. What I understood was that the 1927 flood would come every 12 years. Here is a profile in the Chief of Engineer's report that shows that we have had only one 1927 flood since 1900, and it gives the different floods.

The CHAIRMAN. They did not fix that as definite.

Mr. JACOBS. And they are supposed to operate at 51. By operating at 51 on the Vicksburg gage, you will have possibly an operation once in 12 or 15 years. That is my understanding of the way it is to be operated. But we did pass the 1929 flood that was within a food and a half of the 1927 flood at Arkansas City, and we did pass it by the fuseplug levee.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. I do not want to leave the impression that I stated that the 1927 flood would occur every 12 years.

Mr. JACOBS. No; I did not think you did.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. What I was reading from was General Jadwin's report, that this fuseplug levee at 60.5 would be topped every 12 years on the average; that it has been since 1927, that we have had a flood, and we have about 4 years more coming to us before it would be over the top. Those estimates are not mine; they are the estimates of the Chief of Engineers of the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. Those estimates are nothing definite. It might be one in a 100 years.

STATEMENT OF J. W. SUMMERLIN, REPRESENTING THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS, TENSAS BASIN LEVEE DISTRICT

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Gentlemen, we have been wrestling with this fuseplug area since the adoption of the 1928 Flood Control Act. As I have before stated, we are very peculiarly situated. Our entire taxing district is situated in the State of Louisiana, composed of eight parishes in the northeast part. We are in that gas-producing belt. We have the largest gas field there in the world. We have a good agricultural country.

Mr. GREEN. Pardon me; is that near the Arkansas line?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes, sir. We built our levees in the State of Arkansas, quite a few of them, for our protection on the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers. Our levee protection district begins about 20 miles south of Pine Bluff, and extends along the south bank of the Arkansas River to the Cypress Creek territory, thence on the

west side of the Mississippi to the State line, embracing something like 148 to 152 miles of levee.

Our levees really are about the highest on the Mississippi River. We have some that are 42 feet high, the one especially across Cypress Creek, and other places. That line of levee protects a greater area than any one line of levee in the entire Mississippi Valley. We protect our own district, 1,300,000 acres; the Fifth District, 1,450,000 acres, and the Southeast Arkansas District at this time, with something like 500,000 acres. Then if we have a breach in our line of levee it would extend down to the Atchafalaya and endanger those levees to the extent of maybe 1,500,000 acres-something over 4,000,000 acres of land altogether.

We of course have had this fuseplug idea to contend with since the adoption of the act. Our lands in that territory have been materially reduced in value. In fact, there have been very few if any sales made of that land, no improvements going on. We have been afraid to go in and build a cotton house, even, for fear in the next high water, even as high as 1927, it would wash it away.

The idea in General Jadwin's fuseplug plan was to put 900,000 second-feet through that fuseplug section. We got only 450,000 second-feet in 1927, and it was from 2 to 4 feet higher than the previous high water, 1882. That would have meant double the amount of water that he proposed to give us at this fuseplug. That would have gone over the top of some of the trees and washed away nearly all the houses in that section. We had possibly 100,000 acres in that district that was above the overflow in 1927. One of the guide line levees protected that acreage.

I have been studying this proposition for a number of years. When I was a young man I was up in Arkansas during the 1897 flood. It was our purpose and it has been our plan during these high rivers to send people from Louisiana up to Arkansas as guards. In 1922 we had as many as four trainloads of workmen going from a distance of 150 miles away in Louisiana up to Arkansas City, to participate in that fight.

To go back to where I started in 1927, we had built up our levee in front of Arkansas City about 32 feet higher with sacks boarded up, and held it, of course, against the Mississippi side. That is why our Mississippi people want that diversion there, because we generally outhold them, I do not know why. But I believe they had a crevasse in 1927 and 1903. We both went under in 1912. In 1913 we held the line of levee. At any rate, gentlemen, this proposition of reservoirs that I have been favoring for the last 20 years, our statements I made at the hearing last year

Mr. DEAR. You favor the reservoir?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. DEAR. Are you in favor of the Eudora spillway?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. No, sir.

Mr. DEAR. Are you in favor of building up the fuseplug to the 1928 grade and section?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes, sir; absolutely.

Mr. DEAR. And awaiting for further developments?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes, sir. I think I can show you where we will be amply protected. I take issue with the Government engineers as to what the height of the stage is. If that levee had held, we would

have gotten only about 66 feet at Arkansas City. They fix it at 69. But I figure when they finish this system of cut-offs, especially the one from Greenville up to Arkansas City, that they have now proposed, that will lower our gage by at least 12 feet at Arkansas City. When you take that from 66 feet, that will leave you only 53.5. The superflood they fix at 74, and the 3 feet less will give you 71. Take your 12.5 feet off of that, and it will give you only 58.5 feet, that we passed through there in 1929 without any breaking.

General Ferguson mentioned that this system of reservoirs in the Arkansas and White would give them still further a 5-foot reduction there. If we could get that we could just sit down and see the water flow by.

Mr. DEAR. On what do you base the great reduction because of the cut-offs? On what has already happened?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes. We have what we call a dike extending on the Mississippi side about 7 miles long, from the Mississippi levee on the edge of the Mississippi River to a point opposite our levee. That gives us a very narrow width in there, something less than a mile, possibly. During that high river the water was 9 feet higher on the north side of the dike than it was on the lower side: The dike below there that we have already given the right-of-way for, the Leland Neck Dike, holds it up some, not that much, how

ever.

That is the main channel of the river. They have cut off at least 15 miles around that bend, whereas the canal through is only threefourths of a mile long. We have a mile right-of-way.

Then there is another bend up there in Mr. Whittington's district known as Tarbleau. If you would cut straight through there you would save something like 35 or 40 miles at that particular point. That would give us the relief absolutely.

You have no idea how that fuseplug section has affected-of course, it has not affected the gas industry so much during the high water except during the overflow, but it has affected the values and the handling of lands. We cannot sell them, and do not want to sell them, for that matter; we would rather stay there because they are most productive lands.

We need a system of drainage down there to help us out some, and keep the overflows out, and a good system of drainage. We have the finest country on earth, comparable to the East Carroll and West Carroll land, Senator.

I have been connected with the levee board as an officer since 1913, and served as secretary from 1913 to 1916. I happen to be the one that wrote up the memorial petitioning the Mississippi River Commission to join up the Arkansas and Mississippi River levees. I did it one Sunday at the direction of two presidents, the president of the board of southeast Arkansas and the president of my board. Another question has come up here in connection with the closing of that gap. Formerly we reckoned our gates at Arkansas City about 18 inches above Cairo. Today, or at least before these canals have been affecting the heights, we reckon about 3 feet. Really. closing that gap gave us only about a foot and a half more water through there.

Mr. CARLSON. Was 1929 the last high water you had?
Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. CARLSON. Has not there just been a general lowering of the river the last few years?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. I have noticed it more this year than I have before.

Mr. CARLSON. In the central section or, in fact, the entire central part of the country we have been suffering from drought. Would it be reasonable to assume that it would take a year or two to fill up these ponds and lakes, so that you might have relief from a flood for at least 2 years?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. I think they can fill them up and get them going just as quick as they would put in that proposed spillway.

Mr. CARLSON. I mean that it is reasonable to assume that in this great drought area should we get extensive rainfall or excessive rainfall, it would take a year or two before we would get the water down the Mississippi as you had it in 1927 and 1929. It takes a wet period of several years, does it not, to get extreme floods? Mr. SUMMERLIN. A couple of years, anyhow; yes, sir.

Mr. CARLSON. It would seem it would be reasonable to expect a couple of years?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes.

Mr. CARLSON. That would give them time to construct some of those proposed reservoirs and build up the dikes?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes. I think it would take about as much time to do that. They could do that just as quickly as put in the spillway. Mr. GREEN. In that connection, I read an interesting story the other day, saying that weather conditions travel in cycles. The last several years have been warm winters and dry summers. It predicted that in the next few years, ranging from 10 to 20 years, the rain would increase and the cold would increase. That prediction is supposed to be inspired by or written by one who is a great weather authority, a scientific man in that line. If that is the case, it is possible that we may have greater floods there during the next few years than we have had before.

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Might do it; you cannot tell. Of course, it is guesswork. We have had some rather cold weather down in Louisiana this year. It did not last very long, however. The thermometer got down to about 19 above. That is unusual for us. When I was here in Washington last year, about the 5th or 6th of February, they had the coldest weather they had had here for 20 years.

Mr. GREEN. Your big flood there was in 1927, according to the memory of the oldest citizens, was it not? That was 8 years ago. Mr. SUMMERLIN. Yes.

Mr. GREEN. Do you remember how high the river got in your vicinity?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. At Arkansas City it went to 60.5 feet. That is the basis of our operations.

Mr. GREEN. That was not above the normal elevation?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Oh, yes.

Mr. RANSDELL. You mean above the low water?

Mr. SUMMERLIN. Above the low water; yes. In fact, we had the river running over for about 25 miles in our district. We could not have lasted possibly more than 6 hours longer. Then Mr. Whittington let it give way on his side and let it relieve us. But we got our