Mr. Olds, we are glad to have had your statement, and if you will leave your suggested provision with me here, it will be given consideration. Mr. Barnes, I think you are next. STATEMENT CF C. P. BARNES, ASSOCIATE LAND USE COORDINATOR OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Barnes, is there any statement now that you think would be of benefit to the committee with respect to soil con servation that neither you nor anyone on behalf of the Soil Conserva tion Service gave us during the progress of these hearings, or during the course of the hearings in June 1943? Mr. BARNES. Yes, sir; I think so, Mr. Chairman. I have a brief written statement that summarizes some of the more important findings of our flood-control survey program that does not repeat the testimony which you have had heretofore. The CHAIRMAN. Will you give us that statement for incorporation in the record after it has been completed, and now just emphasize the high points? Mr. BARNES. I will be glad to. The CHAIRMAN. Very well. (The statement referred to is as follows:) SOME GENERAL FINDINGS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE SURVEYS REGARDING THE EFFECT OF LAND TREATMENT ON FLOODS The Department of Agriculture has completed surveys of 19 watersheds, covering nearly 50,000,000 acres, pursuant to the Flood Control Acts of 1936 and 1938. Reports on 15 of these surveys have been transmitted to Congress, and the remainder will be transmitted following interdepartmental clearance required by established procedure. Preliminary examination reports have been completed on 160 watersheds, covering 1,207,000 square miles. Of the 19 completed surveys, 12 found a program of treatment justified pursuant to the flood control acts on the following watersheds: Los Angeles in California. Trinity in Texas. Ouachita in Oklahoma and Texas. Little Tallahatchie in Mississippi. Coosa (above Rome, Ga.) in Georgia and Tennessee. Little Sioux in Iowa and Minnesota. Potomac in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Middle Colorado in Texas. Buffalo Creek in New York. Kickapoo in Wisconsin. Yazoo in Mississippi. Santa Ynez in California. · Reports for the eight watersheds first listed have been transmitted to Congress. Six of the remaining surveys found programs of treatment justified by total benefits which exceeded the estimated cost, but found flood-reduction benefits too small to warrant authorization under the flood control acts although justifiable for installation under other acts. The six watersheds are: Codorus Creek in Pennsylvania. Pajaro in California. Wolf Creek in Texas and Oklahoma. Susquehanna in New York and Pennsylvania. St. Francis in Missouri. In one area, near Billings, Mont., the only remedial measure investigated was improvement of drainage, and the benefits of this measure were found to be less than its cost at the present time. These investigations, carried out in widely separated parts of the country, have added greatly to what was previously known concerning the quantitative effect of land use and vegetative measures on floods. Some of the more important things that have been learned as a result of these surveys are briefly summarized as follows: 1. The principal effect on floods of land use and vegetative measures applied to the lands of a watershed is in the reduction of the small, but frequent, floods on small and medium-sized streams. These small floods, although generally local in extent, do a large aggregate damage over a period of years because of their frequency and because of the enormous number of small streams on which they occur. On some watersheds such floods account for more than half the total flood damage experienced on the watershed over a period of years. This damage is scattered over a multitude of minor tributaries, lying in large part above those portions of the stream system ordinarily protected by reservoirs, levees, and other works of that order. 2. The application of land use and vegetative measures will produce only very slight reductions in the great floods that do so much damage to cities in the main stems of our major rivers. For this reason, land treatment cannot be regarded in any sense as a substitute for the reservoirs, levees, and other measures required to afford protection from these great floods. It forms, instead, a valuable complement to such measures by reducing floods in headwater streams and by reducing the sedimentation of channels and reservoirs. 3. The amount which land treatment can be expected to reduce flood damages varies markedly according to a number of factors, in particular the depth of absorptive soil in the watershed. The data from our surveys indicate that on watersheds having deep absorptive soils reductions of 15 to 40 percent in flood damages may be expected from a feasible program of land treatment. From a similar program on watersheds having generally shallow soils, with their limited capacity to store water, reductions in the average annual flood damage of from 5 to 15 percent may be expected. Mr. BARNES. We have completed 19 surveys in widely separated parts of the country under the terms of the Flood Control Act. The CHAIRMAN. How many reports have you submitted? Mr. BARNES. We have sent you 15; the other 4 will be along after we have gone through the interdepartmental clearance that is required by the procedures that have been set up. The CHAIRMAN. How many of those are favorable reports and how many unfavorable? Mr. BARNES. Of the 15, 8 propose and recommend a program pursuant to the Flood Control Act, while 7 found that there were not sufficient flood-control benefits to recommend their inclusion under the Flood Control Act. The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead. Any further statement that you would like to submit to us? Mr. BARNES. I think I have no further statement, Mr. Chairman, except to say that we believe these eight projects we previously reported are desirable projects for inclusion in the flood-control bill that is pending, if you find it possible to include them. The CHAIRMAN. If those projects are approved, as you recall in the approval of flood-control projects, generally, that approval generally carries with it an authorization for the initiation of the work, so that I take it that the Soil Conservation Service would be able to execute the same policy that is executed by the Chief of Engineers, that if initially we are unable to authorize enough money to complete all the projects, the projects are so flexible that whatever work you would do on any project would fit into the whole picture. Mr. BARNES. That is correct. state The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have had the benefit of your ment, Mr. Barnes. You have been very helpful to the committee. Mr. Munns, will you please come forward? STATEMENT OF E. N. MUNNS, CHIEF, RESEARCH DIVISION, FOREST SERVICE The CHAIRMAN. Would you please state your full name and official position for the record, Mr. Munns? Mr. MUNNS. E. N. Munns, Chief, Research Division, Forest Service. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Elliott had a few questions he wished to ask you. Mr. ELLICTT. Mr. Munns, I asked the chairman to place you back on the stand; I want to ask you two or three questions that I failed to ask the other day after Mr. Ford had made a statement. I thought he was going to follow through and come back later, but he never did. You mentioned the emergency flood-control project in the Santa Ana Basin. What kind of work was this, to begin with? Mr. MUNNS. The emergency work that was mentioned in connection with the Santa Ana Basin, I think was that which took place in the Cajon Canyon. A fi e started from the Santa Fe Railroad ran up the mountains behind, destroying an area of some ten or twelve thousand acres of land. A program was immediately initiated, not so much in terms of flod control per se as it was flood prevention. This emergency work undertaken within the drainage and at the mouth of the canyon, included such things as a debris basin, some channel improvements, and some road erosion control work to prevent slumps and slides, and the sowing of mustard on denuded lands. That work was a big success in that the next following rainy season there was no heavy run-off from the burned-off area in the mountains which otherwise could have been expected. This work probably saved the Santa Fe Railroad from being cut at one point just outside of the city of San Bernardino. It was in the same area that Mr. Way showed on his map in connection with the damages to the Santa Fe and the Union Pacific Railroads going through Cajon Pass. Mr. ELLIOTT. Has the Department of Agriculture ever done any other work like that, and if so, where and under what circumstances? Mr. MUNNS. Yes, sir. The Department of Agriculture has done other work of comparable nature. The first work that was done was in the Santa Ana River Basin, and in a tributary of the San Gabriel. The work followed more or less the same pattern as that in the Kenbrook area I just described. That was the first work done. In addition, a few years later, there were other comparable areas treated near San Bernardino is in the Waterman Canyon area, and near Highlands, both areas being in the Santa Ana River Basin. Those were the emergency projects which the Department of Agriculture has actually carried out, and carried out rather successfully. Mr. ELLIOTT. Has the Department ever proposed to do this kind of work anywhere else, and if so, why was it not done? Mr. MUNNS. Well, there was one area, I think in 1938, near Los Angeles, which is probably the one that Mr. Ford touched on, in the Santa Monica Mountains. A large area burned over in the Santa Monica Mountains right back of Beverly Hills and at the edge of Hollywood. This area was projected for treatment, but because it did not come under the terms of the Flood Control Act, no land treatment could be carried out. Then, in the last year, there were several fires in the San Diego River watershed above San Diego. One of these fires there, you probably recall, cost the lives of a number of soldiers who got caught. The fire burned a considerable acreage in the San Diego watershed, but no upstream control work could be done under the flood-control acts because authorization was absent. Mr. ELLIOTT. Are there any other parts of the country where similar emergency conditions might develop? Mr. MUNNS. Yes. Mr. Chairman, these kinds of conditions can develop anywhere, wherever there are steep slopes, wherever there is easily erodable soils, wherever there are conditions in which the protection cover can be completely and quickly removed from the ground. They develop almost immediately after fires. They can develop anywhere in southern California; in fact, along the whole coast range from San Francisco south to the border. Mr. Elliott possibly has in mind the Santa Maria watershed which used to be in his district. There are other areas in the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valleys, areas adjacent to the Wasatch Mountains back of Salt Lake City and Ogden; some areas in the Colorado River headwaters and elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains, and also probably in the eastern mountains. The committee discussed a program for Bear Creek the other day. The watershed of this stream is one in which a sudden disaster could very well develop with removal of the cover. Some of the trouble in Bear Creek, as a matter of fact, has happened because of the forest fires which have occurred in the headwaters. This the Army engineers mentioned. Mr. ELLIOTT. What policy should we adopt to meet these conditions? Mr. MUNNS. Well, speaking for myself, Mr. Elliott, I would say that legislation might well be considered that would remove what bars there are for carrying on emergency work on any area where fires are likely to denude considerable areas, where there is the possibility of loss of life or the possibility of considerable property damage following forest fires, and where similar corrective measures, as discussed, would apply. There are authorizations in the flood-control acts for doing such works behind the Army Engineer Corps, and where the Corps has authority to do flood-control work, emergency powers are sufficiently broad. But there are many other drainage areas for which there is no legislative authority for upstream emergency work. For this type of emergency, to meet this kind of condition when cover is destroyed, it would seem desirable to consider whether the acts should be broadened to cover those areas. Mr. ELLIOTT. Then you feel a small sum of money should be definitely earmarked for that type of protective work? 97311-44-vol. 2- -45 Mr. MUNNS. It could be. Mr. ELLIOTT. That would be the answer to it, would it not? Mr. MUNNS. Yes; a small sum of money would be all that is necessary. I should think an authorization to do this kind of work, to meet the requirements of emergencies, probably would be better than a special authorization of a sum of money, because money has already been appropriated to the Department of Agriculture, and this money would be available for the work. Mr. ELLIOTT. As I understand it, there is money available in the Department of Agriculture, and it is carried on from time to time; that is, it would need no new money. Mr. MUNNS. That is right. There would be no need of new money, for the appropriations made under the flood-control acts would be available. What is lacking is the authorization to go ahead on areas not covered under the act. Mr. ELLIOTT. In other words, with a correction in the basic act to make it possible, you could do this type of work. Mr. MUNNS. That is right. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Munns, we are glad to have had your statement. Mr. MUNNS. Thank you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. For the sake of the record, in connection with this work in the Santa Ana Basin in the vicinity of San Bernardino, what funds were used for that work? Mr. MUNNS. The funds which had been provided for flood-control work generally in the Department under the first appropriation of $4,000,000 to the Department of Agriculture. The CHAIRMAN. Under the act of 1936 Mr. MUNNS. Under the act of 1936. The CHAIRMAN. And in a word, that consisted of mustard planting and what else, in that Santa Ana Basin? Mr. MUNNS. In included, first, on these burned-over areas, the sowing of mustard on the denuded lands by airplane. The CHAIRMAN. That is native grass out there, is it not? Mr. MUNNS. No, sir; it is the ordinary and common mustard plant such as we use on hot dogs. The seed of the mustard plant is raised commercially in Montana, Idaho, and elsewhere. It is not a native plant. It comes originally from the Mediterranean. The CHAIRMAN. But it grows in the mountains. Mr. MUNNS. Not naturally; no, sir. The seed is sown by airplane, because of the wide coverage that can be obtained with rather small seed. The CHAIRMAN. Is it edible? Mr. MUNNS. When it is ground up, sir, we eat it on our hot dogs. The CHAIRMAN. They have a mustard that is like a turnip salad. Mr. MUNNS. Mustard greens; yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Is it similar to that, Mr. Munns? Mr. MUNNS. Yes, sir. The top of the young plants are edible. The CHAIRMAN. Now, what else did you do in the Santa Ana Basin? Mr. MUNNS. We sowed this mustard seed. Then, in addition to that, there was some channel improvement work done. The CHAIRMAN. What sort of channel work? Mr. MUNNS. It included debris basins. |