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Mr. HILL. That is very well put, Congressman. Those are just my sentiments, exactly.

My name is Frank Y. Hill, and I am an attorney and live in Laredo and have the official capacity as special attorney for the city of Laredo. I make this statement on behalf of Webb County and Zapata County, which front approximately 150 river miles on the river and the Laredo Chamber of Commerce,1 and as Congressman Kilgore has just said, we are kind of the last man on the totem pole over there on the map.

If you will direct your attention to the map-the area I speak in behalf of is Webb County-you see the city of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. Webb County extends up the Rap River some 50 air miles toward Eagle Pass, touching Maverick County on the south and Zapata County, extends from Laredo down south along the river to the waters of the Falcon Dam. That is the area that I am representing, and those three counties are in Senator Kazen's district, and that is why he is here, being vitally concerned with the welfare of the people of his district.

I have a short statement here, Mr. Chairman, and some portions of it I will indulge your patience to read because I believe there are some statistics in here that I believe have not been brought to the committee's attention.

As I said, the area we are talking about now- -we call it the Laredo area, fronts about 150 river miles on the river, which is quite a stretch of the river, since it meanders very greatly.

The main reason for our supporting this dam, of course, is primarily flood control, because there has been tremendous flood damage caused in our section of the river, because of recurring floods over the years.

I have referred to paragraph 2 of the treaty in my statement, but that has been covered so thoroughly by previous speakers I will not read those.

We feel that the treaty of 1944 really is a binding treaty upon this country, and I know our friends in Mexico with whom we associate all the time feel the same way. I think the best interests of the people, and the governmental interests in Mexico, with whom we are in contact, are very profoundly interested in the dam and their position is exactly the same as ours because it is based on the question of flood control and conservation of water, and not from a standpoint of opening up new land to irrigation.

I might point out to the committee the very nature of the_area there, from Eagle Pass on down to Laredo, and down to Falcon Dam. The only irrigated land in that area is on the beaches of the river, and some embayments that have been eroded out over a period of years, and all of the upland there, which starts anywhere from 1 to 3 miles from the river, and rises very rapidly, and is not susceptible to and never can be irrigated.

In our two counties we have no water districts. We have individual riparians who take the water from the river. Since this is an international stream, it necessarily presents problems that are not common in an interior stream in the United States, because half of

1 A presentation prepared by the Laredo Chamber of Commerce of the flood disaster of June 1954 is in the files of the subcommittee.

that water belongs to Mexico and half to the United States, and it flows down the same channel, and we have a great deal of difficulty along the river determining who is pumping whose water.

In this area we have about 300,000 people living on both sides in the reaches of the river above Falcon up to the Amistad Dam site. And since it is an international stream of course the State of Texas, nor any individual could build a public works on the stream, so necessarily, for that reason we know we can get the dam only from the Federal Government-because there is a treaty with Mexico, and there is no other authority that could build these public works on the river and, therefore, we are in the position of invoking the provisions of this treaty to secure the construction of the second dam on the river, which was contemplated when the first dam was built.

It is absolutely necessary to have the upper dam to control the flow of the Rio Grande River, which the treaty says is its purposeto avail of the optimum conservation and the control of the waters of the river.

In our area, and I believe up to Amistad project, our main interest in this dam is effective flood control and storage to firm up the water supply.

Our country is very arid, with intermittent rainfall. Our average rainfall in our county is about 19 inches a year. Sometimes 15 to 19 inches, which is a very small amount of water. For that reason we need an impounding of water in the Diablo Dam in order to firm up our water supply and have a supply of water in times of shortage. I have a few statistics here I would like to read to the committee on the immediate effect of the flood on the Laredo area.

It says a memorandum report of the Corps of Engineers and various reports made to the Governor of Texas on the 1954 flood, shows a national monetary basis loss on the American side of approximately $12 million. Other reports on actual and resulting losses above Falcon estimate a loss of $18 million plus a loss on the Mexican side of $30 million. It has been estimated that the Rio Grande Valley would have sustained a loss of $50 million had not the Falcon Reservoir intervened. Now, that is the 1954 flood when we had a crest of over 60 feet at Laredo.

The Corps of Engineers came in after the flood and made a report and survey. The report is available. The Corps of Engineers report shows an actual property damage and loss to urban and suburban areas of $4,580,000 around the city of Laredo, including approximately $1 million to municipally owned utilities and facilities alone. Webb and Zapata Counties, according to the report of the engineers, sustained a loss of $6,796,000.

Now, in this flood another unusual feature not common to any situation in our country, is the situation of the bridge at Laredo. The American end of the bridge is owned by the city of Laredo, in its municipal capacity, and the Mexican end of the bridge is owned by the Mexican Government. The bridge that was swept away in the flood was a very substantial concrete arch bridge which we thought would never wash away, but this tremendous flood carried it out.

Well, when we undertook to rebuild the bridge we had a municipality in Texas negotiating with a sovereign nation, the Government of Mexico, to rebuild an international bridge, and we concluded a treaty,

that is, the city did, with the Mexican Government, providing for the reconstruction of the bridge. They paid for half of it, we paid for half of it, and we employed common engineers and contractors. It cost us about a million dollars to replace the bridge, and today it is a very modern prestressed concrete bridge, and stands as a monument to cordial relations between the two countries and demonstrates the character of problems we have on the Rio Grande River.

At the same time, of course, when the flood in 1954 came it swept away the highway bridge, and also the railway bridge, and for many months stopped traffic-commercial and tourist traffic-into Mexico, with the resulting tremendous damage not only actual monetary loss, but indirect losses, and intangibles, for the reason that you couldn't carry on international commerce, in inestimable figures.

When those floods come on the river it is not only loss of lives, and restoring of facilities, but there is an ultimate loss to people in our area as well as all over Texas and the United States. We had freight piled up there because the railroad bridge was out, and the international bridge was out.

If we undertake to evaluate this project that would prevent such recurrences of such disasters as this, it is not only of direct benefit to us in that immediate area, but to the whole State of Texas, and also to the United States, because all over the country there was goods piled up in Laredo for months and months, until we could reconstruct the bridges. Commerce was at a standstill. That very greatly affected the economy of not only a large portion of northern Mexico, but it was felt all over the United States.

Laredo is on the Pan American Highway, and the railway and highway to Mexico provides most of the movement of commerce through the port of Laredo.

From the standpoint of flood advantages, that is very vital to us, and that is one of the reasons that we are very much in favor of this dam.

Now, on the conservation of floodwaters, the report of the engineers shows there will be considerable conservation of additional floodwaters conservation and storage. I believe the figure is quoted as about 260,000 acre-feet. This morning it was explained to us to be a net of about 81,000 second-feet. That isn't an appreciable amount of water, and that water is not gravely needed, from the standpoint of additional water needs. Remember, this will not open up any new land. It will simply maintain the water supply we have, and the people from Del Rio on down to Brownsville, through the Rio Grande Valley, all the people on the river in the United States are using every effort to prevent the additional acres being put into irrigation because the river is already overappropriated, and there is not enough water. With these dams we would have enough water to get by with the acreage we have in. I might point out another interesting fact that all the area above Falcon up to the headgates of Maverick County District is in the hands of the local and State courts, and the lands below is in the custody of the State courts in Edinburg. In that extensive litigation is involved, of course, water rights. We have there the riparian doctrine still held by our Texas courts, and that is another example of the uniqueness of this project.

I don't think the Government has ever dealt with a project like this where you have international implications and have peculiar conditions along the river. Because the water rights on the Rio Grande River are still in a state of chaos, or are in an unsettled state.

We don't have any water districts in our area. Water is pumped from the river by individual pumpers and farmers who own this riparian land. For that reason, the question of putting in additional land is a question of individual concern, and we have all tried to prevent developing additional land. This is not a case where new land will be opened up to irrigation. It is merely a project which will conserve what water we have and apply it to the land we have under irrigation, and no more.

It is also basic to our economy agriculturally, commercially, and municipally.

As I say, we have a lot of troubles down there. You have called. the committee's attention to this fact: Laredo, Tex., has a population of 70,000 people, and Nuevo Laredo a 65,000 population making approximately 140,000 people in the metropolitan area, with just the river and the bridge separating them and to all effects they are one

town.

Now, in 1953—and I don't suppose this sort of situation would be duplicated anywhere in 1953, in June and July, the river ceased to flow at Laredo. We had 140,000 people without even sanitary water,. or drinking water. We have been anticipating those situations for a long time. The city has spent lots of money exploring for underground water in that area, but there is none. So here we have 150,000,. approximately, people in a metropolitan area, whose sole and only supply is the Rio Grande River. The next watershed is the Nueces: River, and under Texas law you cannot invade one watershed to bring water into another watershed. Therefore we have no other source. In July 1953, for months we were short of water. We didn't have sufficient water in the city, and we had to ration it for a long time. Then in 1954, less than a year later, we had this flood that not only washed away our bridge, it washed away our waterplant, and washed away our sewage disposal plant. So in 1953 we didn't have any water, and in 1954 we had so much we couldn't handle it, and it destroyed us.

So we think this dam will correct that situation and give us the protection we believe we are entitled to, and that we believe was contemplated by the U.S. Government when they negotiated the treaty with Mexico.

This has a tremendous repercussion upon the public health and, as a matter of fact, the livelihood and personal safety in preventing loss of life and to support our economy, because our economy can't stand such surplus and famine, and it has been going on for years.

We had a 7-year drought that ended in 1953 when we had no water in the river, and every 4 or 5 years the water in the river gets to the point where it is very low, and we have a contest with our friends up in Eagle Pass and Maverick County, to get them to let a little water down to us to give us enough to drink and use for sanitary purposes. So we think it is the responsibility of the U.S. Government under this treaty to provide this facility on the river because it is the only authority that can do it. The State of Texas can't do it, and we can't

do it. We just believe as a matter of general public benefit it has every merit in the world and it should be built.

As I say, since we are so vitally and so directly connected with it, we, of course, are very much in favor of the dam and hope that this committee will make a favorable recommendation to the main committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee. (The prepared statement presented by Mr. Hill is as follows:)

The city of Laredo, the County of Webb, and the County of Zapata, Tex., and the Laredo Chamber of Commerce, by authority of their respective governing bodies, jointly file this statement in support of H.R. 8080 now pending before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and by such appearance strongly urge the approval of and a favorable report on the bill by the committee.

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

Webb County, in which the city of Laredo is situated, and the portion of Zapata County lying above Falcon Dam front on the Rio Grande River for approximately 150 river miles and are situated above Falcon Dam and below the site of the Amistad Dam. Therefore, the people of this vast reach of the river have a vital interest and concern in the construction of the Amistad Dam, since its benefits from flood control and impounded municipal, industrial, and agricultural water will profoundly affect the economy and the public health and welfare of this large area of the river basin.

The area here represented is semiarid and the waters of the Rio Grande are the lifeblood of its inhabitants, since there is no other water source, surface or underground, to supply the municipal, industrial, commercial, domestic, and agricultural needs of the people of the area. The uncontrolled river in the past, with its alternate disastrous floods and water famines, has undermined the economy of this section, and has retarded its growth and progress. A controlled river above the existing Falcon Dam is the only solution to the ills above mentioned, and since the Amistad Dam will provide such control, we appear before this honorable body to earnestly advocate its construction and support the pending authorization bill.

I

The 1944 water treaty between the United States and Mexico provides for the joint construction of dams on the Rio Grande River for the conservation, storage, and regulation of annual flow of the river below Fort Quitman. Falcon Dam was built under the treaty and now stands as a monument to the friendship between two nations and an example to the world of true international relations.

Falcon Dam has controlled the river down to the Gulf of Mexico and has been a boon to that section of the river basin in flood control and conservation storage. But this dam is not enough and we are here to invoke the provisions of the treaty authorizing a dam upriver from Falcon, and Amistad is such a dam.

II

Those of us in south Texas living on the Mexican border and practicing the good neighbor policy year in and year out know first hand that the construction and operation of dams on the Rio Grande with complete harmony between the two countries in the division, allocation, and control of the impounded waters, has largely promoted the present good and cordial relations between our country and Mexico.

Our friends and neighbors in Mexico living along the river are strongly supporting the construction of Amistad Dam in their own country, and the failure on our part to execute the terms of the treaty will not be understood by them, and of such misunderstandings is made mistrust and bad international relations.

III

The report of the International Boundary and Water Commission on the proposed Amistad Dam and Reservoir is before the Congress and it would be presumptious and redundant to here review the data contained therein upon which the Commission bases its findings, conclusions, and recommendations. Suffice it

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