review it was determined that $3,150,000 will be sufficient. That is the amount which the water resources board has agreed upon and which is requested and I understand, too, that the Army engineers have agreed that that is the amount required. As background, let me say, Mr. Chairman, that the project for flood control for the Kings River and the Tulare Lake Basin was authorized for construction by the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, in Public Law 534, 78th Congress, and commonly known as the Flood Control Act of 1944. It is not part of the Central Valley project of the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The watershed of the Kings River lies on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and covers an area of 1,600 square miles. All tributaries unite to form a single stream which enters the San Joaquin Valley at Piedra about 22 miles east of the city of Fresno. The lands to be protected from floods, commonly known as the Kings River service area, embrace about 1,100,000 acres and are situated near the geographical center of the State of California and of the San Joaquin Valley, which is the southern lobe of the Central Valley of California. It is my understanding that the latest estimate of cost of the project is $42,022,000. Congress has appropriated $38,872,000. This leaves a balance of $3,150,000 needed to complete the project. I respectfully urge your committee to approve an appropriation of sufficient funds to finish the job. The dam is now more than 95 percent completed. The concrete is all poured. The contractor is engaged in grouting the foundation and installing six 38 foot by 42 foot radial gates in the spillway at the top of the dam. He is already dismantling some of the installations in the aggregate pits preparatory to shipping them to a job in Japan. The Kings River Pine Flat project, while primarily for flood control, will also serve irrigation and make power development feasible in the mountain watershed above the dam. It should be borne in mind, however, that the use of the reservoir for irrigation, while substantial, will always be incidental to flood control and will not reduce or impair its usefulness for flood control. In order to have a public district empowered to contract with a Federal agency, there has been created by a special act of the State legislature of California, the Kings River Conservation District embracing the entire irrigated area. Contract negotiations for the use of the project for conservation purposes, temporarily halted by the change of the administration in Washington, are well advanced. It is believed that a contract will be executed in time to use the dam for conservation next year. The water users and the people generally who reside in the area benefited are grateful to the Congress for providing sufficient funds to keep the project moving forward at the most economical rate of construction. Their representatives who have appeared before the committees of both Houses of the Congress from time to time are very appreciative of your patience and understanding and the many courtesies which have been extended to them. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Hunter. THURSDAY, MAY 14, 1953. SACRAMENTO RIVER MAJOR AND MINOR TRIBUTARIES WITNESS HON. CLAIR ENGLE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA Mr. DAVIS. We are pleased to have with us here this morning our colleague, Clair Engle, of California. I understand you are going to give us information with respect to some problems in the Sacramento River area. We would be pleased to hear from you at this time. LITTLE CHICO-BUTTE CREEK Mr. ENGLE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. My interest is in the project known as the Little Chico-Butte Creek, which is a part of the project referred to as the Sacramento River major and minor tributaries. These flood-control works were approved in the Flood Control Act of 1944, House Document No. 649, 78th Congress, 2d session, and amended by the Flood Control Act of 1950, House Document No. 637, 81st Congress, 1st session. The situation on the Little Chico-Butte Creek is this: The Federal Government and the State have spent a little over $1 million on this project. They started at the lower end of it. I have here a map which will indicate the work that has been done. The map I am showing you indicates the completed clearing and completed levees on the lower end, shown in green. The uncompleted levees, which are the subject of my discussion now, are on the upper end of the project. Some time ago, Mr. Chairman, I sent you a little memorandum and asked to have the engineers get some information in verifying the general information which I am giving you on this problem. Now, the difficulty is that the engineers started at the lower end of this project and, as I say, $1,062,000 I believe has been spent. It will cost another $700,000 to complete the project. The works they have completed at present do not reflect an economic project. They started at the lower end there because the people of the lower end wanted an assurance that they would have the clearing and the levees necessary to take care of the additional water which would be put down on them from Little Chico Creek when the project was completed. We got into the Korean war, and under the order put out by the previous administration, all works were stopped. So we sit here at the present time with a project on which over $1 million has been spent and which, unless completed, is uneconomic. The portions of that project which make it an economic project with a better than 1-to-1 benefit-to-cost ratio are those portions at the top of the project which give protection to the highly cultivated and highly developed almond orchards and to the city of Chico. So, in the absence of completing this project the Federal Government has, for all intents and purposes and with only minor benefits involved, poured $1,062.000 down the drain. The Army engineers out in California this time requested some funds, I believe, in their budget. That money, if my information is correct, was stricken out back here in the national office by the engineers themselves or by the Bureau of the Budget. That is the reason I sent over a memorandum some time ago so that a specific question could be asked of the engineer witness in order to develop what was sent in from the regional office. The regional office believes this matter is important, and recommended that the additional money, or a portion of it, be appropriated to complete the project; and they support the economics of the original project. In the absence of completion of it the money is simply wasted and those people sit there under the threat of devastating floods. You can see by looking at this clearing and levee work that the water from upper Butte Creek can come down and get outside of the lower levees which have been constructed. Therefore, we have very, very little protection. But when the upper end is hooked up, then you have an integrated project which, according to the Army engineers, would be economically feasible. What I am saying is that Federal Government is like a fellow who started to build a house and when he got the walls up did not put the roof on. If we do not get the roof on, we are going to lose that portion of the house which has already been built, or at least will have it really damaged. In any event, it is an uneconomic enterprise to leave it as it is. Why they struck this out back here I do not know. Maybe they thought it could wait. That, of course, is a question of imminence of damage which may occur in this area. The State reclamation people will be in here to testify this afternoon, I believe, and they will very strongly urge that of the moneys appropriated for the Sacramento River major and minor tributaries a substantial allocation be made for this particular project for the reason that it involves the most valuable area in and around the city of Chico, a community of 25,000 people, plus the highly developed almond orchards in the upper reaches of Butte Creek. Those are the areas where tremendous damage can take place. In the absence of completing this project the money spent by the Army engineers and the Federal Government is simply going to waste. So, in a sense, this is a salvage operation to make good the investment already placed in that project by the Federal Government. If we happen to hit one large flood in that area, we can have a tremendous damage, all of which was supposed to be safeguarded against by the expenditures already made. I have a very deep appreciation of the problem the Appropriations Committee is facing. I know you are trying to hold your appropriations down. You get into a question of priority of projects. That is what it amounts to. Which are you going to do first? In this instance we have over $1 million invested in this project, all of which may for all practical purposes go to waste if we get the kind of flood which can occur in anyone of the winters ahead. I am simply urging that in the priority of projects some very special consideration should be given to those cases where the Federal Government has invested its money and where in the absence of completing the project we stand to lose the Federal investment and certainly not to achieve the economic kind of a project which was contemplated when it was initiated and when the Federal Government put its money in. Now, unless the committee has some questions I will proceed to the next item. RIPRAPPING WORK, SACRAMENTO RIVER The next item is very similar to this. I suspect that you have no reference to it at all in your record there. This has to do with some riprapping work which was done along the Sacramento River, to prevent the Sacramento River from breaking out of its banks and getting into a tributary. I asked the Army engineers out at the regional office in Sacramento to prepare a memorandum, which they did, in answer to a specific question submitted by the State reclamation board. I have copies of that communication, which indicates they went up and examined the situation. I have a map which will show what the problem is. The graph which I am presenting here is one prepared by the local people. It is from land plats. It is obviously not a technical job, but it portrays the situation generally. The portion indicated in green is where the Army engineers went in and did some riprapping. The purpose of the riprapping was to keep the Sacramento River in the bend which swings east from cutting into Antelope Creek, which parallels the Sacramento River at that point, thereby preventing the Sacramento River from taking off down Antelope Creek and isolating a large area of valuable land. The engineers in their statement here give the distances they went with their riprapping. The trouble is that they did not go far enough. They claim they ran out of money, which I assume is probably correct. Now, since they got in their riprapping the river is working around the edge of the riprapping and threatens again to cut over into Antelope Creek. Here we are faced with precisely the same kind of a situation as before, except if anything it is on a more emergent basis than the previous case I mentioned; namely, that if the riprapping is not extended a sufficient distance to get beyond the place where the river is at this time-it only has, I believe, 75 feet to cut to get across and join the two channels-not only will the moneys which have heretofore been spent be wasted but in addition to that in order to corral that river and get it back into its channel tremendous amounts of money will have to be spent, and great damage will be done to this highly valuable and very highly developed farming area. I want to file, also, a memorandum prepared for me under date of February 6, 1953, by the State board of reclamation, which gives a general description of what has occurred there and what the situation is, which is in addition to and supplements the letter written by Colonel Haug which I have already submitted. The committee will observe that a reference is made to the basic authorization under which this work was started. It was an act by Harry Englebright back in about 1941 or 1942, sometime in that era. It involved $150,000. Now they say that that money has all been spent. Therefore, there is some question raised both in Colonel Haug's statement and in the statement filed by the State reclamation board as to the basic authorization for spending any more money. You can send $50,000 out to do this riprapping work, which Colonel Haug estimates would be necessary there, in the nature of preserving existing works, and I understand, that under the law you do have that authority. If that authority is not sufficient it would be necessary, I assume, for the committee to write in a special clause in the bill which presumably to that extent would be subject to a point of order as legislation on an appropriation bill. It is my feeling, however, that in this instance the item can be justified as an item to protect existing flood-control works and existing improvements already put in, which in this case it manifestly is, because if the addition is not put on the previous riprapping is simply thrown away. In addition, if that happens somebody is going to have to get in there and get the river turned around and back into its channel. So, if the committee feels it is necessary to add a sentence in the bill to do that it occurs to me that it is the sort of thing we would not experience very much trouble with on the floor from a point of order, because of the very serious situation we have here. That is the situation, Mr. Chairman, in both of these cases. As I have previously said, I am asking the committee to rescue investments already made on projects already initiated by the Army engineers. A failure to do that will result, in my opinion, in not only the loss of existing Federal investment but in all probability great damage to the particular area involved. Notwithstanding the fact that neither one of these items has been given budget consideration, I hope the committee will give them their very serious attention. With reference to the last item, which only involves the small amount of $50,000, it would seem to me to make good sense to save what we have, with so small an amount, when on the face of it the Government is looking forward to a great deal larger obligation if the river gets out of its channel and takes off down Antelope Creek. That is all, Mr. Chairman. I know you have a lot of work to do and I appreciate your taking the time to hear me out. Mr. DAVIS. We are glad to have the information you have furnished us on these two interesting projects. Mr. ENGLE. Mr. Chairman, may I ask that the communications which I submitted be made a part of my statement at the end thereof. (The documents are as follows:) CORPS OF ENGINEERS, UNITED STATES ARMY, Subject: SPKGE 824.01 (Sacramento River). Sacramento, Calif. GENTLEMEN: Reference is made to your letter dated February 10, 1953, relative to the caving of the left bank of the Sacramento River downstream from the end of the bank paving near the mouth of Antelope Creek. Representatives of this office inspected the caving bank at this location in company with Mr. Gather, a local landowner, on February 3, 1953. The inspection disclosed that the bank paving completed by the Sacramento district in the fall of 1950 is in excellent condition and has prevented the Sacramento River from cutting through to Antelope Creek at that location. However, beginning at a point immediately downstream from the end of the bank paving and extending downstream a distance of about 1,200 feet, considerable bank caving and erosion has taken place. The Sacramento River bank at one place is within about 75 feet of the old Antelope Creek Channel. Mr. Gather stated that a maximum of 120 feet of bank has been eroded in the past year at the worst location. Should the |