people. I think these people have done very well not only in not coming to us for a cent, but because their contribution here has been very large indeed. Mr. McDUFFIE. About three to one in some cases. Mr. NEWTON. We dredged out the canal. The CHAIRMAN. They were favored by nature as to their harbor, but they have done a great deal on that south side of the city of Seattle. Mr. McDUFFIE. How do you get your electricity? Mr. MILLER. The city owns its plants-water power. Mr. MCDUFFIE. Where do you get it? Where is your plant? Mr. MILLER. We are putting one in now at a cost of $7,000,000. Mr. McDUFFIE. Where is it? Mr. MILLER. Skaget River. Mr. McDUFFIE. How far is it from your city? Mr. MILLER. About 40 miles. Mr. McDUFFIE. Do you know how much potential water power there is in the State of Washington? Mr. MILLER. About one-seventh of the entire Nation. Mr. MCDUFFIE. Do you know that, or is that a guess? Mr. MILLER. That is according to the Geological Survey. Mr. McDUFFIE. Well, it is a guess on their part. No complete survey has been made, I dare say. GREAT SODUS BAY HARBOR, N. Y. The CHAIRMAN. The next project, gentlemen, on my list is the Great Sodus Bay Harbor project in New York. General Beach, let us hear from you on that. General BEACH. The Great Sodus Bay is a small bay on the south side of Lake Ontario, about 30 miles east of Rochester. It has been improved by the United States by the provision of parallel piers extending into the lake at the entrance and by a channel between them 150 feet wide and 15 feet deep, with increasing width at the lake end. Within the bay there are natural depths of more than 18 feet over a considerable area. The Pennsylvania Railroad owns and operates a coal trestle on the bay west of the entrance, available on equal terms to all carriers, and also a small commercial wharf. Request is made that the entrance channel be increased to a depth of 20 feet and width of 300 feet, and be resited so as to have its axis parallel to the pier. The principal importance of Great Sodus Bay is as a shipping point for bituminous coal. Its commerce in 1922 was 119,000 tons, and in the past years has been as much as 191,000 tons. Its only important competitor on Lake Ontario in this traffic is Charlotte Harbor. The coal for Great Sodus Bay comes over the Pennsylvania Railroad, principally from West Virginia points; at Rochester Harbor or Charlotte Harbor as it used to be called it is received from Pennsylvania coal fields over the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad. Those ports are served by lake carriers whose charges in general appear to be about equal; in addition Rochester Harbor handles a considerable car-ferry traffic. Rail rates on coal at Great Sodus Bay are somewhat in excess of those at Rochester Harbor. Despite this fact the Great Sodus Bay coal is enabled to compete with the Charlotte Harbor coal. The district engineer states that the coal carriers in this trade have a maximum draft of about 18 feet and can be accommodated at the more important lake ports where they deliver their cargoes, but that due to limited depth at Great Sodus Bay they are unable to load to full draft. During the navigation season the level of the lake is usually a foot above low water. He believes that the present project width of the channel is sufficient, since on account of its short length there should not be any occasion for vessels to pass each other between the piers. He recommends a channel 18 feet deep at low water datum and 150 feet wide, at an estimated cost of $82,000, with $12,500 annually for maintenance. That recommendation is approved by the division engineer and the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors, except that the division engineer believed it might be advisable to reduce the work a little bit. I recommended that a modification of the project which was made by the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors be adopted, and that an entrance channel 18 feet deep at low water, at an estimated cost of $51,300, with $12,500 for maintenance, be provided for. The CHAIRMAN. What are the conditions, if there are any? Are there any conditions? General BEACH. No, sir. The CHAIRMAN. What do you think about it, General, aside from your recommendation? General BEACH. I might say that there are no conditions in this part of the work, other than a requirement that local interests should provide an 18-foot channel within the bay, which was considered as an adequate measure of local cooperation. That will involve on their part an expenditure as large as that of the Government. Mr. KINDRED. May I ask again how much the Government is to spend there? General BEACH. $51,300. Mr. KINDRED. That seems like a small appropriation for a project of that kind. TOLOVANA RIVER, ALASKA The CHAIRMAN. The next project is Tolovana River, Alaska. General, should we take that matter up or not? General BEACH. That is a question of the opening of a section in Alaska which has no adequate means of transportation in the summer time. I can not find out that there is very much commerce, but it is affording a method of getting in or out for the people and of transporting supplies. The reports do not show the number of people or the fact that there would be an appreciable commerce. It is simply a question of opening up a route, a tract of land in the interior of Alaska which at present is almost entirely cut off from access. The CHAIRMAN. Would there be any way of getting any additional information in the course of the next six weeks? General BEACH. Absolutely not. GLENCOVE CREEK, N. Y. The CHAIRMAN. The next is Glencove Creek. General BEACH. Glencove Creek is a small tributary of Hempstead Bay, which is an arm of Long Island Sound. It is about 30 miles from New York, and the cove extends for about a mile. into the mouth, and it is desired for the purpose of handling building materials which would be distributed more economically over a considerable portion of Long Island from that point than would be possible by rail from New York City, owing to the congestion and the difficulty of handling the materials from the water to the cars. The CHAIRMAN. It is on the condition that local interests shall pay for adequate terminal facilities? General BEACH. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. General, is there anything more about that? CAMBRIDGE HARBOR, MD. The CHAIRMAN. The next project is at Cambridge Harbor, Md. I see that it is $15,000. General BEACH. That is a case of a harbor on the east side of Chesapeake Bay. It is one of the most important harbors in that section of the State, and it has outgrown its facilities. The transportation by water in that harbor has increased so that the harbor is no longer adequate properly to handle it. The CHAIRMAN. This is conditioned also on a suitable contribution by local interests? General BEACH. I do not remember. The CHAIRMAN. I see that on page 3. ONANCOCK RIVER, VA. The CHAIRMAN. The next is Onancock River, Va. General, can you tell us about that? General BEACH. That is a case of a small stream which is used by the fishing boats coming in and out, and they need a little greater depth across the bar and to have the channel extended slightly further upstream. It is a small amount and is in the interest of navigation. The CHAIRMAN. You have an existing project. This is simply providing additional facilities for a project that has been already adopted. Is that correct? General BEACH. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. And you say that the reports there justify the improvement? General BEACH. We think so, sir. COWLITZ RIVER, WASH. The CHAIRMAN. Cowlitz River, Wash. Why do you need this survey, General? General BEACH. The Cowlitz River floods the harbor in the vicinity of Toledo and Mayfield. It interferes with navigation by causing bars to form in the harbor, and interferes with the maintenance of the improvements. The CHAIRMAN. What you want to do is to make a survey to see whether anything could be done; and if so, what should be done? General BEACH. Exactly. The CHAIRMAN. And you estimate it will cost this much? General BEACH. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. And you want an authorization of not $7,200? General BEACH. Yes, sir. FERNANDINA HARBOR, FLA. The CHAIRMAN. Fernandina Harbor, Fla. Are you acquainted with that? General BEACH. I am, very well. The CHAIRMAN. Tell us about it. General BEACH. It is a case where we have secured a good deal better channel by natural causes than the project calls for, and the Seaboard Air Line Railway Co. has gone in and established a big phosphate rock-shipping terminal above the head of the present deep channel and desires to have the depth of 26 feet extended up to that terminal. The CHAIRMAN. There is no question about the desirability from the standpoint of commerce and from the standpoint of supplying the farmer with the basic materials for phosphate of this improvement being made? General BEACH. The shipments of phosphate are made from it. The railroads are practically making this the phosphate shipping harbor. The CHAIRMAN. And if we are to supply fertilizer to the farmer at reasonable rates, we ought to make this improvement? That is about what there is to it, is it not? General BEACH. I would state that the railroads leading from the large phosphate fields of Florida to tidewater have established a port here at Fernandina which they are using to transfer the rock from car to vessel, and the harbor is developing a very large and important trade in this matter and, of course, the larger and deeper traffic vessels can bring it to the terminal cheaper than the phosphate can be delivered and fertilizer produced. INVESTIGATION FOR PLANS TO COMBINE NAVIGATION IMPROVEMENTS WITH WATER-POWER DEVELOPMENT Mr. McDUFFIE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, the hour is late and I want to beg your pardon for imposing upon you at this time. I believe the committee was impressed the other day with the necessity of the Government or the Congress or the people of this country knowing something about the available water power on our navigable streams. The CHAIRMAN. Read your resolution to us. Mr. McDUFFIE. I have several resolutions, gentlemen, but I want to say this first: The Legislature of Alabama urged our delegation to call on Congress to make a survey for navigation in combination with power on the streams of that State. I have introduced the resolutions here; they are for the consideration of the committee. I think that this committee ought to authorize a study and a preliminary report on the estimated cost of making a survey on all the rivers of the United States, and for that reason I framed this resolution which I will read to the committee for its consideration. Mr. KINDRED. You mean for purposes of navigation and commerce? Mr. McDUFFIE. The Federal Government controls the navigable streams. To give you an idea, for the Cumberland River this Congress has adopted a project for construction of nine navigation dams at a cost of $10,000,000. By building three dams for power we can save the Government the $10,000,000, develop both power and navigation. The CHAIRMAN. He is going to read the resolution. Mr. McDUFFIE (reading): The Secretary of War is hereby authorized and directed to cause to be made by the Corps of Enginers, United States Army, such investigations as may be necessary for the preparation of a general plan for the most effective navigation improvement in combination with the effective development of the potential water power on those navigable streams and their tributaries where such power development appears most feasible, together with an estimate and report of the cost of conducting such investigations on all the navigable streams of the United States and their tributaries, where possibilities of feasible water power development appear to exist. The sum of $500,000 is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the purposes of the foregoing provisions of this act. The CHAIRMAN. General, do we need any $500,000 for that purpose in the next two years? We do not want to make this too high. Won't $200,000 answer the purpose? General BEACH. The executive secretary of the Water Power Commission asked for half a million The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Did he not ask for the $500,000 for the actual surveys, not for the preliminary investigation? This is a preliminary investigation. General BEACH. I understand that there is a little bit more than that where the stream is navigable and it is necessary to go into both features. Mr. McDUFFIE. To study the stream as a whole from the standpoint of its navigability. The CHAIRMAN. This is simply a preliminary study? General BEACH. Yes, sir; but one on which the fullest utilization of our rivers depends. Mr. KINDRED. I am in accord with your proposition, but is there any similar survey authorized by any department of the Government? General BEACH. The committee has just authorized $315,000 to complete a survey on the Tennessee River. The CHAIRMAN. Has any action been taken on that request of the secretary of the Water Power Commission? General BEACH. I have no definite information. The CHAIRMAN. General, we have another deal in two years. Would not $250,000 be sufficient between now and two years hence? Mr. McDUFFIE. How much can you economically spend within the next two years in making this study? General BEACH. Considering the fact that you will have to organize the forces and that we are having already considerable difficulty in getting people into Tennessee, I would probably say for the purpose that we could get along with $250,000 at the outset if we were assured of the entire amount at the proper time later. Mr. McDUFFIE. May I ask you to ask this witness over here, Mr. Waldo, a question or two with reference to this? He has done this all his life. |