Existing protective works have proven their efficiency and economy.

STRATEGIC AREA

I would like to point out that the work we proposed is in the interest of national defense, calling attention to the committee this insert area has been declared militarily strategic (a) as being more immune to enemy attack because of geographic location; (b) as a producer of food and fiber crops necessary to national defense; (c) as the location of many and varied industries processing vital materials, for example, chief source of Nation's aluminum supply; and, finally, (d) as the location of important military installations.

There are 5 major military establishments within this 375-mile stretch in Arkansas that I am discussing with you at the moment.

In conclusion, we submit herewith a chart showing the respective projects recommended, together with the amounts urgently needednot only to safeguard previous appropriations, but which can economically and justifiably be spent during the ensuing fiscal year. These recommended amounts total $11,240,000. We also endorse the request made for funds to initiate the Dardanelle Dam.

I submit along with this statement a description, which the clerk has, of the physical conditions existing at each of these points that we recommend as needing attention.

Senator MUNDT. To what extent do your recommendations differ from the Bureau of the Budget, if at all?

BUDGET RECOMMENDATIONS

Mr. SANDERS. The Bureau has recommended $3 million, and we pointed out previously in my statement that the engineers asked for $6,085,000 and stated they needed $4,085,000 as the minimum need. The Budget saw fit to cut that to $3 million. We say that defeats true economy.

Senator YOUNG. You make a very good case.

Senator MCCLELLAN. You would like for them to restore up to the amount the engineers said was the minimum need? Mr. SANDERS. That would be the very minimum.

ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN

STATEMENT OF BROOKS HAYS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

Representative HAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This committee has very patiently heard me on previous occasions. I feel in this instance that we have such able and well-informed representatives from the State that I should not burden the record. I came primarily to inform myself on some of the current situations, and I have been helped by the testimony.

I do want to thank the committee for letting me appear and making this brief statement. I am familiar with the fact that all of you have lived with the problem of flood control and river navigation for many years. I am more familiar with Senator McClellan's record, of course.

He got to Congress years ahead of me, and I have learned from him some of these legislative solutions.

I might highlight one figure in response to Senator Ellender's question about the losses of acreage in this valley. We have had some disastrous floods in my lifetime. In 1927, in 1943, and the 1945 floods, all were devastating.

In the 1927 flood, Mr. Chairman-startling but true-one-tenth of all the cultivated acres between Fort Smith and Little Rock were destroyed. A few of those acres were reclaimed by the removal of sand. Most of the destruction was by washing away. That will give you some idea of what one flood can do.

We appreciate what the Senate has done for us, and I ask your continued interest in it.

Thank you.

Senator MCCLELLAN. Thank you, Congressman Hays. I appreciate your coming over and being present.

Next is Mr. Leonard White of Little Rock. Mr. White represents the Arkansas Resources and Development Commission of Arkansas. That is the official commission of our State government. Mr. White, you may proceed.

ARKANSAS RESOURCES AND DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION

STATEMENT OF LEONARD N. WHITE, LITTLE ROCK, ARK.

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Leonard N. White and I live in Little Rock, Ark. Í am making this statement on behalf of the State of Arkansas in my capacity as flood-control engineer with the Arkansas Resources and Development Commission. I am authorized by the commission through instructions from Mr. Arthur M. Emmerling, director, to appear at this hearing.

The great Arkansas River flowing entirely across the State passes through an area of intensive activity and great potentialities. This river is important to the economy of the region and its progressive development must continue.

As it has moved on its way across Arkansas, some 362 river-miles, its course has changed many, many times. The meander belt is many miles in width in many places. The people of the valley have done what they could to develop its resources while at the same time coping with the river's vagaries and unpredictable changes. We have been told by competent engineers who have studied the rivers of the alluvial valleys that lands lost by caving may be re-formed elsewhere downstream, but that such lands pass through a certain development cycle before they become suitable for crop production.

In addition to becoming physically suitable for production, land development operations must be instituted and flood protection must be provided before full utilization can be obtained. Most estimates of which I am aware place this cycle at about 50 years. Thus it is apparent that each acre of land removed from production by caving banks will not be replaced and cannot regain reasonable productivity at some other location until another half century has passed.

The people of the Arkansas Basin would like to see this cycle erased. Within the past half century great advances have taken place in the

development of the Arkansas Valley. With appropriate measures being continued to fix the course of the river, we confidently expect greater development within the next half century.

NEED FOR RIVER CONTROL

We cannot be resigned and content with the ideas that the river is the master and that men should not seek to control it and that the valleys should be left to the river's meanderings and that the rich soil should not be relied on for profit. Man's ingenuity and technical abilities dispute such ideas. Rivers have been substantially controlled elsewhere in these United States and acceptable plans have already been conceived for the control of the Arkansas River.

It is an indisputable and repeatedly demonstrated fact that the alinement of the Arkansas River will not remain constant without the application of known engineering techniques and construction procedures. Witnesses before the committees of the Congress for several years past have presented pages of testimony to the effect that levees alone have not provided complete protection against flood losses and that years of such efforts have resulted in great financial losses in many areas. Levee setback upon levee setback have consumed many, many fertile acres.

What then is the alternative? What is the practical thing to do? What are the already demonstrated effective procedures? The establishment of the alinement of the river to a fixed location by bank stabilization and realinement where deemed advisable is proving to be the effective solution.

A start has been made on the Arkansas and at no location where such work has been completed to plan and specification has it become necessary to go back and perform further protective work. The experience thus far on the Arkansas is that when such work has been completed, that is the end. That condition has not been true with respect to levees alone, but we believe that the combination of bank stabilization with levees built to withstand designed flood flows, will make of the rich valley of the Arkansas a region which will produce food and fiber in abundance and encourage industry.

Bank-stabilization works which have been constructed are securing the investment in levees which the Federal Government has already made. Vulnerable links in the existing levee system can be made strong and secure by bank stabilization. We urge the Congress to make available adequate funds for the continuation of needed bank stabilization.

The specific locations where the needs for corrective work is most urgent will be presented by other witnesses. May I thank the committee for the time given us for this presentation.

Senator MCCLELLAN. Thank you, Mr. White.

Mr. Robert Brooks of St. Louis. Mr. Brooks is a consulting engineer and represents many interests, I think, that have interests in the Arkansas River Valley.

Mr. Brooks, you have a prepared statement?

STATEMENT OF ROBERT B. BROOKS, CONSULTING ENGINEER, ST. LOUIS, MO.

NEED FOR BANK STABILIZATION

Mr. BROOKS. Yes, which I would like to file after I talk to you for 5 minutes.

You and Senator Mundt and your colleagues, Senator Case and Senator Young, are just as familiar with the Missouri River as Senator McClellan and Senator Ellender are down on the Arkansas and the Mississippi. I wish that I could speak with equal authority because I have listened to you all. I learned from Senator Mundt just 10 days ago in St. Louis a lot of things I did not even know about rivers and harbors in the United States. You can well be proud of the impression he made among the river-minded people Monday a week ago in St. Louis.

Senator MUNDT. Thank you.

Mr. BROOKS. Your problem in Arkansas is very similar to the one that you all have on the Missouri River in that 128-mile stretch between Sioux City and Omaha as it was in 1945. What the Army engineers and you, with your tremendous experience, have found out is this: There isn't any use in building levees only to be washed away in times of runoff of the river. So you found it necessary to use the experience of the Army engineers in building bank stabilization works, pile dikes, mattresses, and revetments before you built these levees. Otherwise, they are no good and simply wash away and have to have another one built.

You have the same experience up in your section, Senator. So that it what most of this stabilization program is. I am speaking particularly, Senator McClellan, from that stretch downstream from Pine Bluff, Ark., which has a soil very similar to your section up there downstream from Sioux City. It is very easily erodible and you have to set up your bank protection and then build your agricultural levees.

In this section, particularly downstream from Pine Bluff, there is a section where the Arkansas River swings back and forth until it is led into certain guided channels. You know you can lead water but you cannot stop it. That is what they are doing down there. In this particular section downstream from the Rob Roy Bridge of the Cotton Belt Railroad, just a little ways south of Pine Bluff, the Army engineers with your appropriations have gradually started a bankstabilization program; and for the last 2 years, particularly in the vicinity of Madding, Ark., have controlled this river so that it does not tend to thrust its weight in periods of flood against the levee that has been built for many years.

LEVEE PROTECTION

As as matter of fact, on the left and north bank of the Arkansas River, you have a levee there, as Senator McClellan knows, that in that vicinity protects 568,000 acres of land, the railroad bridge, highway bridges, and 6 submarine pipeline crossings of the Mississippi River Fuel Corp. that brings natural gas 435 miles from down in Louisiana up to the industrial section of St. Louis. That pipeline brings 400

million cubic feet of gas from Louisiana and some from Texas up to the industrial section of St. Louis.

With the filed statement which I will leave with you, I will show you the names of just a few of the industries that are dependent on this natural gas for fuel to build manufactured products and to manufacture munitions of war. I have summed up at least those companies which produce $160 million per year of those goods.

PROTECTION OF GAS PIPELINE

Along with that, Senator McClellan, this pipeline serves 22 towns in north Arkansas. This bank-stabilization program you have set up in the last 2 years has done a splendid job, but they need another $300,000 for an additional bank protection on the left and north bank of the river to keep your present works from being outflanked, and they need $250,000 on the south bank to do the same thing.

In other words, this will complete practically the work of protecting that entire reach which in turn, when it is stabilized, will protect that levee that conserves the 568,000 acres of land, the highway bridges, the railroad bridge, and all of these pipelines. In other words, it is in the public welfare and national defense.

The engineers have worked it out, the Budget has approved it, and you have started that 2 years ago.

AMOUNT NEEDED

Senator MCCLELLAN. You said $300,000 more was needed in this particular area?

Mr. BROOKS. What I said was-if you will excuse me-$300,000 for a bank-protection works immediately upstream on the left bank at Madding to keep that present works from being outflanked, and $250,000 on the south and right bank.

Senator MCCLELLAN. Are those items in this $3 million?

Mr. BROOKS. Yes, sir.

Senator MCCLELLAN. So you are testifying in support at the moment of what is in the budget?

Mr. BROOKS. Yes, sir. The reason that I am doing that, Senator Young and Senator Mundt, is to prevent down in Arkansas what happened up in your State and in the States of Iowa and Nebraska where they spent a certain sum of money and then since 1946 did not appropriate one single cent. You have lost $18 million worth of previously constructed river works because they did not protect what they already had. They have lost $18 million in 3 years. That is what Senator McClellan has fought for in Arkansas.

I am awfully proud to have had the pleasure of talking to you because I know you know more about this river stuff than I do. Senator MCCLELLAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Brooks. Mr. BROOKS. Here is my statement, sir.

(The statement referred to follows):

STATEMENT OF ROBERT B. BROOKS, CONSULTING ENGINEER, ST. LOUIS, Mo. You are considering the recommendation of the Director of the Budget for the sum of $3 million for the Arkansas River and tributaries. The bank stabilization of what is known as the New Gascony reach in the vicinity of Madding,