General MARKHAM. I do not know. All we can do is just sit tight and see what you do.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. That is the very thought I was trying to bring out, namely, the practicability of your economic recommendations insofar as getting results is concerned. I think you will be found sitting there years from now just as you have in the past, and that area up in the Eudora floodway and in the Boeuf Basin will be the same, no change being made. That is what I want to find out, what Congress is going to do under those circumstances. If Congress says again the liability is on the United States to go in there and acquire the floodways as it did in section 4 of the Flood Control Act, then it can be built, can't it?

General MARKHAM. Yes; we can go ahead.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. In other words, with your recommendations it is very probable it will be constructed?

General MARKHAM. No; I do not say that. Otherwise I would not report it.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. But there is no certainty about it?

General MARKHAM. The committee will have to come to their own conclusions after they hear these gentlemen.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. But if the law was continued as in section 4 of the 1928 Flood Control Act, it can be constructed, and this construction begun?

General MARKHAM. Yes, sir; in 10 days or 30 days.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. And the work would be done?

General MARKHAM. Yes.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. With reference to this back levee, it is not proposed in your report to construct this levee from the head of the Eudora spillway up the Arkansas River, until after the Eudora floodway has been constructed and is in operation?

General MARKHAM. Correct.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Then that would leave the Boeuf Basin just as it is, as a floodway functioning in the event of an excess rise, continuing to function for the next few years during the construction of the Eudora floodway?

General MARKHAM. Until we could get to it.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Of course, that is indefinite, but I believe your plan says it will take about 6 years to finish it?

General MARKHAM. I think it is about 6 years for the total construction.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. So that this condition would still obtain there

for that period.

General MARKHAM. Until we could complete it.

Mr. MCCLELLAN, Yes, sir.

General MARKHAM. And, perhaps, that area would not be flooded for many years to come.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. And it might be wet next week?

General MARKHAM. Correct.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. That is one thing over which Congress has no control. I notice over here on page 12 of your report, you make an itemized statement of estimates of costs of the building of certain reservoirs, in which you show the construction cost, land and damages, railroad relocation, and highway relocation. Have you

made an estimate of the cost of construction of the Eudora spillway on the same basis?

General MARKHAM. Oh, yes.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Would you mind inserting that in the record, so that we could have the benefit of it?

General MARKHAM. General Ferguson is here, and he can talk about those estimates with you.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. That will be available and will be submitted? General MARKHAM. Yes.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. I understood you to say now that under the Markham plan the Government was not to maintain this spillway levee in the Boeuf Basin there up to this grade of 1914?

General MARKHAM. Let me get that question.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. I want to be clear about this, General. Did I understand you to say that it was not your interpretation of the law, of the 1928 Flood Control Act, that the Government was to take care of maintaining the levee at the head of the Boeuf Basin spillway up to its 1914 grade?

General MARKHAM. Up to its 1914 grade?

Mr. MCCLELLAN. It was the intention?

General MARKHAM. It was the intention of the Government for that whole levee to be kept at its 1914 grade.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Do you propose in your report to continue to do that?

General MARKHAM. To do that as provided?

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Has it been maintained generally by the Government during the past 6 or 8 years?

General MARKHAM. I do not know.

Major OLIVER. Yes.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. You say that it has been maintained by the Government, is that correct?

General MARKHAM. I will say that he tells me that they are now putting it back to the 1914 grade.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. You mean you are just now beginning to do it? General MARKHAM. We never had any obligation of maintenance on that levee of any kind. The maintenance of that levee, like the levees on the Arkansas River and elsewhere, has been a matter of the local interests.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Under your construction of the Flood Control Act and the Jadwin report it was not your duty to maintain that levee?

General MARKHAM. That is correct.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Is that correct?

General MARKHAM. Yes; that is my impression.

The CHAIRMAN. It was your duty to build the levee up to the 1914 grade and section, but maintenance, as on all other levees, was with the local agencies?

General MARKHAM. Yes; until these last 2 months we paid no attention to that levee. We put it on the local interests to maintain their affairs respecting that 1914 grade of the levee.

The CHAIRMAN. But you are now building it up to the 1914 grade? General MARKHAM. Only to the extent, Mr. Chairman, that the local interests were not taking care of the levee. As I understand

it, we had no duty to maintain it. In other words, the local interests were expected to maintain that to the 1914 grade.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. I would ask you further about that when I can find it. I think the law provided that it should be maintained, in section 3.

General MARKHAM. My statement is, it does not.

Mr. MCCLELLAN (reading):

Section 3. Except when authorized by the Secretary of War upon the recommendation of the Chief of Engineers, no money appropriated under authority of this Act shall be expended on the construction of any item of the project until the States or levee districts have given assurance satisfactory to the Secretary of War that they will (a) maintain all flood-control works after their completion, except controlling and regulating spillway structures, including special relief levees.

Now, that is an exception. It says the local interests shall not do it "except."

General MARKHAM. That is the first time I ever heard that language.

Mr. MCCLELLAN (reading):

That they will maintain all flood-control works after their completion, except controlling and regulating spillway structures, including special relief levees.

General MARKHAM. Colonel Graves says that the language up to the last 4 or 5 words, up to the comma, refers to the maintenance of flood-control structures.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Yes; but the local interests won't maintain them except these structures. We must except these structures, and that would mean the Government was to maintain them.

General MARKHAM. In other words, what Colonel Graves is saying, is that the law says local interests are obligated to "maintain all flood-control works after their completion (comma), except controlling and regulating spillway structures (comma), including relief levees."

In other words, relief rolls are included in the obligation for the local interests to maintain.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. What does this exception mean?

General MARKHAM. The exception means we maintain controlling and regulatory spillway structures.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Isn't that a spillway structure?

General MARKHAM. Not in our interpretation.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. You do not interpret that as a spillway structure where water is spilled out?

General MARKHAM. Not at all.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. What would be one?

General MARKHAM. Those that we build ourselves.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Didn't you make this one by building up the levees on either side?

General MARKHAM. I think not.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. What did you make, then?

General MARKHAM. I think we just restrained the water to grade and head, up to the fuseplug.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. What do you say in your report about it?

General MARKHAM. I do not know I say about it, but the intention necessarily is, under this new plan, where we definitely want

the water down the floodway, necessarily we will see that it goes down that floodway by the operation of the spillway and the fuseplug.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. This is from section 118 of the Jadwin plan, which was adopted by the Flood Control Act:

To insure that excess water will leave the main river, a fuseplug section of the levee in the vicinity of Cypress Creek must be kept at its present strength and at its present grade, viz, 3 feet below the new levee grade.

Now, wasn't that the purpose of the construction, so as to create, and dosn't this so state, that the purpose of it is to create it so that will cause a diversion from the main channel at that point? General MARKHAM. Put it in this fashion, if you will: The purpose of the United States was to do nothing of its own volition to prevent water going over that fuseplug.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. But they made it so it certainly would go over. General MARKHAM. They did, and so intended.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Then, it was the creation of a condition that did not exist prior to that, as to that particular levee.

General MARKHAM. That took a lot of discussion at that time.
Mr. MCCLELLAN. It had not happened before?

General MARKHAM. You can assume we made arrangements for that, where it would not go over as well as it would at the fuseplug.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Reading from the Jadwin report, which was adopted, with reference to control of this levee, section 120, it states:

The United States must have control over the Cypress Creek levee and keep it substantially at its present strength and present height. The land in question was originally an overflow channel of the Mississippi, and it must be available for the use of the river in extreme floods.

Wasn't it the intention of the Government by that language to take care of it and maintain it?

General MARKHAM. That sounds like it; yes. However, you are reading the language of General Jadwin, not of Congress.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. You do not place that construction upon it?
General MARKHAM. I had not even thought about it.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. You had not thought about it?

General MARKHAM. What is your understanding of that, Colonel Graves?

Colonel GRAVES. That report also recommended that the Government be given authority to issue permits for levees in the Mississippi Valley. That provision of the Jadwin report and recommendation was intentionally left out of the law.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. That which I read was not left out.
Colonel GRAVES. Oh, yes; it was. That comma is in there.
Mr. MCCLELLAN (reading):

The United States must have control over the Cypress Creek levee and keep it substantially at its present strength and present height.

Colonel GRAVES. The Chief of Engineers at that time wanted that authority, but he did not get it.

General MARKHAM. What Colonel Graves is saying is that the law itself did not follow that report in the language there. That is the report Congress did not accept.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Is that the reason you have not maintained it?

General MARKHAM. I do not think we have maintained it as a normal proposition.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Under what authority are you now giving orders to have it maintained since the law has not been changed?

General MARKHAM. As Colonel Graves points out, maintenance is described in the act as cutting grass, removal of weeds, local drainage, and minor repairs of main river levees.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. That is the function that you say the local interests are to perform. What you read is the function the local interests were to perform and not the Government.

What construction was placed on it and how do you propose to change it? I ask you again if what you read there is not what the local interests were to do?

Colonel GRAVES. There are two authorities in the law for repairing that levee. In the first place, section 3 says except when authorized by the Secretary of War these things are to be done. He has made an exception and authorized this in particular cases.

Also, in the last paragraph of section 6, the law says "in emergencies" the Government can do this work.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. That is general emergency work, and you can do that anywhere.

Colonel GRAVES. You have two authorities there.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. That is what the Government holds.

Colonel GRAVES. Yes; but they have two discretionary authorities there.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Can you find anything in the act which adopted the Jadwin plan that changed this declaration of policy? In the report of General Jadwin, he said the United States must have control over this levee.

General MARKHAM. The law adopted the engineering plan of the Jadwin report, but not all of its other recommendations.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. You say it included special relief levees, but this apparently establishes the character of levee, names it specifically, that they designate to have control over.

Colonel GRAVES. The law did not adopt all the recommendations of the report of the Chief of Engineers of that time. For example, that report recommended that local interests pay 20 percent of the costs of construction and that recommendation was not adopted by the law.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Here is what I am trying to get at. If the local interests could have gone down there, as you say, and built up the levee on the opposite bank, built up the levees contiguous to this, you would never have accomplished anything in the world.

General MARKHAM. Oh, yes.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. What else, except get the levee higher?
General MARKHAM. That is rather a hard question.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Because you would not have had a spillway. Colonel GRAVES. You are correct in saying we would not have accomplished the plan exactly as planned.

Mr. MCCLELLAN. Yes.

Colonel GRAVES. But the strengthening of the levees all up and down the river insured that there would be no crevices until the water had risen to 602 on the Arkansas City gage and, of course,