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At a meeting of the officers and trustees of Freemen, Inc., held in Newfane, Vt., February 7, 1944, the subscribed protest was approved unanimously, and it was voted to present it to the honorable members of the Flood Control Committee of the United States House of Representatives at its hearing to be held in Washington, D. C., February 11, 1944; and it also was voted that Judge Edward J. Shea, counsel to Freemen, be delegated to present it in person.

Freemen, Inc., has two simple and exclusive reasons for existence. Its immediate purpose is to save from death by drowning at the hands of the present administration one of the fairest valleys in Vermont. Freemen, furthermore, oppose the threat to constitutionally guarantee American liberty contained in the flood-control law of 1938, adopted as amended by Senator Barkley.

This law, we believe, nullifies the sovereignty guaranteed each State by the Bill of Rights; it abolishes whatever laws any State may have established for protection of its own interior territory; it strips the homes and properties of all Americans, everywhere, bare of any defense against Federal depredation and confiscation.

We believe that this flood-control law of 1938, under the provisions of which the national administration purposes to build the gigantic dam at West Dummerston, is an immediately dangerous step away from the system of American government, prescribed by the Constitution, and toward totalitarian despotism. The dam at West Dummerston, for which we are told surveys have been completed, will have a height, Senator George D. Aiken, of Vermont, informs us, of 526 feet above mean sea level. (The Senator may have been inaccurately informed.) The minimum level to which the water behind the dam ever will be permitted to fall is 440 feet above mean sea level.

The reservoir formed by the dam will be an irregular and narrow lake, extending some 12 miles up the valley. It will destroy completely the villages of West Dummerston and Harmonyville. Precincts, large or small, of Williamsville, Brookline, Newfane, Townshend, and West Townshend will be immersed. Other neighboring towns will have their environment disfigured, their way of life dislocated. The sanctioned drop of 86 vertical feet in the reservoir's level periodically. will bare wide stretches of mud and rotting vegetation, a menace to health, a deterioration to property values.

A long stretch of taxable land will be abolished, vital highways will be immersed, local industries wiped out, ancient cemeteries destroyed, farms abolished and hundreds of persons will be driven from their homes, in some of which their ancestors had dwelt for more than a century. All this destruction and disruption a lovely valley and its plain people are invited to endure for the sake of so-called flood control.

Freemen by no means oppose legitimate flood control. They admit and endorse its extreme necessity. We are Vermonters and we subscribe to Vermont's attitude toward flood control, which always has been enlightened and generous,

By the Connecticut River Flood Control Compact of 1937, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut established a practical agreement for flood control. During this negotiation, Vermont made manifest its willingness to grant all its sister States required and pledged itself, at need, to give still more.

more.

The compact and the machinery it established were approved by the Army engineers; they were acclaimed by the then Acting Secretary of War as a model other States would do wel lto follow. The Flood Control Committee of the House, the Commerce Committee of the Senate favorably reported the measure. Despite this general endorsement, neither House of the Congress was permitted to vote upon it.

We believe that flood control is only a collateral or even a subsidiary purpose of the monstrous dam proposed at West Dummerston. We are certain that future high water damage can be more economically averted, with infinitely less disaster for an entire area. We base our contention on the following facts:

1. Earlier surveys of West River by Army engineers established that dams, wholly adequate for flood control, could be erected at Newfane or Williamsville. The Newfane dam's cost would have been $4,500,000; the Williamsville, $7,000,000. Lieutenant Colonel Garbisch, of the Engineer Corps, recently was quoted in the New York Times as fixing the cost of the proposed dam at West Dummerston at $30,000,000.

2. Members of Freemen who have spent their lives in West River Valley hold that full protection from high-water damage may be obtained in this area with far less consequent destruction of homesteads and disruption of local economy than by any of the proposed dams cited above.

The West River is a comparatively brief stream, and subsidiary "feeder" brooks contribute largely to its flow from above Weston, Vt., to its mouth at Brattleboro. We believe the flood-control problem on West River can be most easily and painlessly solved by the building of comparatively small and cheap flood-control dams on the feeder streams-the Marlboro Branch, the Wardsboro Branch, Turkey Mountain Brook, the Winhall River, and possibly at the headwaters of West River, itself. Reservoirs created by such dams would flood in the main only waste land and would cause a minimum of disruption and disfigurement. No investigation of this probability ever has been made by the Army engineers. We urge that, if flood control be the prime purpose of the national administration, such a survey immediately be made.

3. We believe that the proposed dam at West Dummerston presents, not an insurance of but a mockery of flood control. We hold that any system of so-called protection against high-water damage which attain's that end by flooding permanently 12 miles of a populous and beautiful valley defeats its professed purpose at the outset.

Freemen contend that the projected enormous dam will be dedicated only fractionally to its expressed purpose-flood control. The surveys of the Army engineers already have proved that this sole purpose can be obtained by smaller, less expensive structures. Literally, possibly one-third of the height of the great dam may be devoted to restraining destructive high water. The remainder will be employed primarily for power production and for such subsidiary purposes as stream regulation and the establishment of a so-called recreation area about the reservoir.

In the matter of power production, Freemen respectfully request the members of the Flood Control Committee to consider the following:

1. Vermont, already, within its own borders produces what is as far as Vermont's own needs are concerned, a superfluity of power.

2. The industries and homes of Vermont at no time are able to utilize all the electricity created by the power dams already in operation.

3. Surplus power made in Vermont continually is exported in large amounts. These vary from 38 percent of total production in a dry year to 65 percent in a year of high water.

4. We question, furthermore, the power-producing potential of West River. We are the intimates of this river. It is our neighbor. We know it, save for a few days of high water each spring, to be a mild and shallow stream. The vast dam which the national administration intends to build seems excessively oversize.

In the light of the above, we can see no way whatsoever whereby the construction of the Federal Government of a dam, largely devoted to power production, within Vermont's territory, will profit or benefit the State or its people. Under the plan, now advanced, Vermont and Vermonters would be penalized, would suffer extreme hardship and widespread destruction, yet would receive in view of the State's current annual power surplus, no conceivable compensation.

We have been informed by grave authority that a subordinate yet important feature of the dam's construction will be the development of a "recreation area" about the consequent reservoir. We view this contention less with indignation than with a sour amusement, for the following reasons:

1. This fair and healthful region which the national administration now purposes to drown has been, for the last decade, increasingly a recreation area, without benefit of Federal interference. Hundreds of urban families have bought, are still buying, modest summer homes in the very area the administration plans to destroy by flood. More folk in search of Vermont's peculiar brand of recreation come to our valley yearly. Many of them-teachers, college professors, physicians, lawyers-consider what now are their summer residences as the homes they will occupy permanently upon retirement. The recreation facilities of the area already are being satisfactorily developed in Vermont's own way.

2. The preposterous contention that a 12-mile-long reservoir, with a variable water level of 86 vertical feet will add to the beauty of the sports facilities of West River Valley is the sole genuinely humorous element we have discovered in a tragic situation. Freemen might find it less mirth provoking if they did not have, close at hand, eloquent proof of the contention's fantastic nonsense.

Twenty-two years ago, the New England Power Co. built a dam in Whitingham, Vt., which impounded a large reservoir within the townships of Whitingham and Wilmington, in this county. This reservoir, in its general features, closely resembles the dam-created lake with which the national administration purposes to fill West River's lower valley. It is familiar to all of us. It lies comparatively close at hand.

Each summer, water is drawn from the Wilmington-Whitingham Reservoiras it will be from the proposed West River Valley lake. Each summer, mud, slime, rotting stumps, water weeds are exposed in a continually widening, increasingly unsightly rim. Each summer, at the height of the recreation season, the water level of the reservoir is at its lowest. Few venture to wade through a treacherous border of swamp in search of "recreation." Few hardy souls have built pleasure or amusement palaces on the edge of that annually bared quagmire. An identical "recreation area" is what the national administration purposes to bestow on West River's valley.

Freemen, in summation, endorse and uphold the necessity of adequate flood control. They contend that no such monumental dam, no such tragically ruthless destruction as the administration plans is necessary to attain it, in West River's valley.

Freemen are wholly aware from frequent observation of the WhitingtonWilmington Reservoir of the substance and aspect of the recreation area into which the dam at West Dummerston, will turn a tranquil and lovely valley.

Freemen are willing to sacrifice much, with the rest of Vermont, so that Connecticut and Massachusetts may be secure hereafter against the peril of floodwaters. We are not willing to abandon homes that are birthrights of many of us; we are not willing that one serenely beautiful precinct of our State be ruined so that more power can be exported from Vermont to mills and factories elsewhere. Freemen challenges the necessity and the legality of the monumental dam at West Dummerston. This is our cause. We shall continue to uphold it. Respectfully submitted.

FREEMEN, INC.

The CHAIRMAN. I will recognize Congressman Hoeven. Mr. HOEVEN. I would like permission to file a statement at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. Your statement may be filed, but in connection with what matter or project?

Mr. HOEVEN. The Missouri River project as reported by the Army engineers, with which we are heartily in accord.

The CHAIRMAN. You favor the project as reported by the Corps of Engineers?

Mr. HOEVEN. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have your (The statement referred to is as follows:)

statement.

STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE CHARLES B. HOEVEN, OF THE EIGHTH DISTRICT OF IOWA

Mr. Chairman, I am one of those who filed a resolution with this committee asking for a review of the reports on the Missouri River contained in House Document No. 238, Seventy-third Congress, second session, and House Document No. 821, Seventy-sixth Congress, third session, with a view to determine whether any modification should be made therein with respect to flood control along the main stem of the Missouri River from Sioux City, Iowa, to its mouth. Your committee has before it the most comprehensive Missouri River improvement program that has ever been presented to date and I express the sincere hope that the authorization for this program will be approved by this committee. Extensive hearings have been held and a thorough investigation and survey has been made by the Army engineers culminating in the splendid report which is now before you.

I am sure that the people of northwest Iowa, whom I have the honor to represent in the Congress, do not favor or prefer any single kind of river development to the disadvantage of any other. We also feel that there is enough actual water and potential water power in the Missouri River Basin to meet the needs of everyone. Neither do we feel that any particular section of the country along the river has any right or priority on the rainfall which ultimately gets into the channels of the river.

The matter of appropriations is not of the moment before this committee. What we want to do now is to get the program approved and then to ask for appropriations as they are needed. There should be no delay in giving this

approval for it will take several years to complete the project as outlined. We must keep in mind that the plan presented here is a flexible one. The engineers have testified that changes and alterations in the plans may have to be made from time to time as the work progresses, so there is every reason to believe that the plan can be carried forward expeditiously and to the best interests of all sections along the entire river.

We are deeply concerned about the constant flood hazard which prevails along the Missouri. Sioux City, Iowa, in my congressional district, is a city of some $3,000 people. The city is built right at the juncture of the Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers. Much of the business section of the city is built on the river flats and is subject to overflow in time of flood. The city has been classified as a critical area by the War Department, meaning that it is in a constant position of danger when the Missouri River goes on a rampage. Thousands of dollars of property have been lost in prior floods, as well as human lives. We must do everything we can to prevent further floods and we are of the opinion that the system of reservoirs contemplated to be built under the program as presented will relieve our fears in that regard. The earthen dikes are not sufficient to hold the water back. I am sure it is freely admitted that if it had not been for the Fort Peck Dam the damage done as a result of the 1943 floods would have been very serious at Sioux City and at all parts along the river below the dam.

In this connection I am advised that a report on the survey now being conducted by the Army engineers on the Big Sioux River will be filed with your committee on or about the 15th of May of this year. Though this matter is not now immediately before your committee for consideration, I want to make reference to this matter in connection with the Missouri River reports. The Big Sioux River, which is one of the largest tributaries of the Missouri, forms the boundary line between the northwest corner of Iowa and eastern South Dakota and joins the Missouri at Sioux City. The Big Sioux River Valley from Sioux Falls, S. Dak., to Sioux City, Iowa, has an average width of 3 miles and is subject to frequent floods which at times in the past have resulted in the complete loss of all crops. area involves about 140,000 acres valued at $5,000,000. For several years back the flood danger seems to be getting more acute and I am hoping that this committee will give due attention to this particular problem when the report on the survey comes to its attention.

This

In this connection, may I also be permitted to call your attention to a report on the survey of the Little Sioux River which will be filed with your committee on or about April 1 of this year. The Little Sioux River in my congressional district joins the main body of the Missouri at River Sioux, Iowa, in Harrison County. The record shows that in years past there has often been a disastrous loss of crops because of flood conditions along this river. Countless acres of corn, small grain, and other crops have been entirely wiped out, causing loses that run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am sure that this committee will give careful consideration to this report when it comes before you.

Closely related to the flood-control program along the Missouri is the problem of food production. The great Midwest has been called upon to produce food as never before. Floods on the Missouri have covered thousands of acres of fertile farm land at various times in the past and thousands of heads of livestock and much farm equipment have been destroyed. It stands to reason that if we are to make the most of our food-production program we must relieve ourselves of the flood danger.

Lastly, the proposed flood-control program will be very vital in the post-war era when our Nation is being converted from a wartime to a peacetime basis. Thousands of men will be released from the armed forces and from the munitions plants and factories of the country. They must have jobs. We want no soup lines in America. With a staggered work program such as this river project will afford we can put thousands of men to work at gainful employment as soon as the war ends. Thus, with a plan which in my judgment will ultimately alleviate the river floods, with a plan which will permit the planting and harvesting of crops without fear of their destruction from the ravages of flood thus insuring a constant production of food and keeping the bread basket filled, and a plan which will afford much employment in the post-war period, I can see no legitimate or valid reason why this authorization for comprehensive Missouri River flood control should not be made. I hope that this committee will give this program its unanimous approval.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Murray, did you have anything else you wished to say?

We recall your former statement to the committee when we had under consideration the Missouri River Basin. Would you like to make an additional statement at this time, and if so, we will be glad to hear you?

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES E. MURRAY, SENATOR, MONTANA

Senator MURRAY. I will speak just very briefly. I was here on the occasion of filing my statement and listened very attentively to the statements being made by Colonel Reber of the Army engineers, and I was so impressed with the fact the Corps of Army Engineers understood this problem so perfectly that I did not have any apprehension but what the rights of the upper States would be very well safeguarded.

It seems to me that this program is very important to the country. It is absolutely essential that it should be carried on along the lines indicated in the engineer's statement, but I am only hopeful that they will not overlook the great importance of the upper tier of Statesthe Dakotas and Montana and Wyoming-which are the sources of the water supply.

It seems to me that control of these waters at the source is very important in many respects. It is important in connection with the silt problem, by having dams placed at the upper reaches of the streams, it is going to save a great deal of damage along the line.

With the cooperation of the various departments, the Department of the Interior, the Reclamation Bureau, the Army engineers, and the other Government agencies that are interested in agriculture and public lands, it seems to me that a program can be worked out which will be of great benefit to the Nation. I want to say that I feel that I can endorse the Army engineers' program here, because I am confident that with their knowledge of all the interests and conditions. involved that they are not going to overlook the need of protecting the rights of the upper States, the neglect of which would be a great injury to the Nation as a whole. Unless we get proper utilization of our great water resources it will result in a serious situation in that section of the country, which is recognized as one requiring special consideration.

With irrigation and regulation these States can be made of great value to the Nation as a whole and can also contribute their part in the control of the whole flood situation down the Missouri and the Mississippi.

I do not think it is necessary for me to say anything further than what I have already said in my statement presented to your committee. I think that the statement I have submitted covers the situation quite fully.

I merely want to say that I approve the Army engineers' effort because I am confident that they are going to work out a program that will be beneficial to all the States involved and to the country as a whole.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to ask you just one question, Senator. With respect to the appropriation of waters by the States of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, and Nebraska and other States, do you know of any vested right or any rights that those States would

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