I am also enclosing a brochure put out by the Harlingen Chamber of Commerce which will give you some idea as to why Harlingen needs this dam for flood protection.

I respectfully submit this information in the hope that your committee will do everything possible to facilitate the early construction of this dam, as the city of Harlingen is in dire need of this protection.

Yours very truly,

EDWARD H. GREEN.

AMISTAD DAM AND RESERVOIR

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1960

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS,

Washington, D.C.

The Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs met pursuant to adjournment in room 1310, House Office Building, at 10:30 a.m., Hon. Armistead I. Selden, Jr. (chairman of the subcommittee), presiding.

(Also present were the Honorable O. C. Fisher, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, and the Honorable Joe M. Kilgore, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas.

Mr. SELDEN. The committee will come to order, please.

Today we will continue our hearings on the Amistad Dam project. We are very pleased to have with us this morning to testify the junior Senator from the State of Texas, the Honorable Ralph Yarborough.

STATEMENT OF HON. RALPH YARBOROUGH, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is a great privilege to come here from the coordinant body of the Congress and I want to express my appreciation for your permitting me to give my brief testimony first so that I may turn to other duties.

I appear here in support of this Diablo Dam, or Amistad Dam, as it is now called. I want to point out a few general considerations about it. I shall not attempt, of course, any detailed information of an engineering or a geological or other type, because you have experts on that. Since I lived at El Paso 31⁄2 years and started the practice of law there, I have been in this area many times. If the committee will pardon a personal reference from the only Senator from Texas who has actually lived in far west Texas, I believe that I have some personal knowledge of the desires, hopes, and plans of the people of that area. I believe that the prospects for the economic development of that area are good.

I have been in all nine western counties in the past 3 years, and I was told that I was the only Senator to have ever visited these counties. There has been some discussion about the water rights between the lower Rio Grande Valley, the Laredo area, Eagle Pass, and the upstream water rights.

Some of those things are not yet settled. It may take a long time to settle them. In my judgment, the beneficent effects of the con

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struction of this dam should not be held up until the water rights are settled. I think that can go forward concomitantly with the construction of the dam.

The flood of 1954 alone brought such great devastation downstream, particularly in Nuevo Laredo, to show the feasibility of this dam.

There has been discussion of feasibility. If we suddenly discovered such a cheap matter of extraction of fresh water from the sea as to make all dams for irrigation purposes unfeasible, this dam would be feasible for flood control alone if that were the only purpose of it, because of the great damage wrought at these cities and the great damage to the cities up and down the river. The great threat that is posed to the entire Rio Grande Valley was shown by the 1954 flood. A little more and the whole valley would have been flooded and Brownsville partially destroyed.

In brief, this dam is needed for protection alone. It would be feasible on that one score.

I want to point out, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, that the two counties in the Lower Rio Grande area, each of these two counties are within the 10 most populous counties in Texas.

I want to point out further that each of those counties at times has been among the top 10 counties in the United States in value of agricultural production, under the Secretary of Agriculture's annual listing of the 10 most valuable agricultural production counties in the United States of America.

In addition, Mr. Chairman, aside from flood control which itself would prove the feasibility, there will be a need for this water for irrigation projects.

Now, there is a contest over the water for irrigation. There are other needs. I speak now of the coming population surge to this area of the country. When you have been through southern California you realize how fast that is filling up with population and how valuable the land has become.

Last year when I was visiting in Orange County, Calif., I was advised that land had become so valuable for residential purposes that it was no longer feasible to tend the original groves. They are spreading these suburbs out to where there are more than 6 million people in Los Angeles County alone.

Not only is the west coast gaining rapidly in population. The little man is finding Florida land going up in price and this overflow of population is coming to the southwestern States.

In another part of the Southwest which I visited at Albuquerque, N. Mex., last Saturday, they told me their population had recently reached 1 million persons for the State of New Mexico.

The gulf and Pacific southwestern areas are the coming areas for the population boom. A study by the Chase National Bank also confirms this projection. It is the estimate of the bank that by 1975, that a third of the population of the United States will be west of the crest of the Rocky Mountains.

A Chicago syndicate recently announced plans to build just east of El Paso, Tex., what they call a model city for a million and a half people. That is merely indicative of this population shift to the Southwest. By contrast, now, El Paso County has a city of 280,000 people, and a county population of something over 300,000.

Again, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I do not speak as an engineer or geological expert; however, I wish to briefly review some of the general governmental and economic conditions in this

area.

Our heaviest rainfall in Texas is recorded over on the Sabine River at the Louisiana border at 60 inches of rainfall per year. In contrast, in El Paso County in the Rio Grande River Basin less than 10 inches per year is recorded. That is the only county in the State with less than 10 inches rainfall a year. The rainfall declines as you come in from the gulf to the semiarid sections.

The rainfall declines 1 inch for each 15 miles you travel in Texas from the eastern border, from that 60 inches on the east to 10 inches in El Paso County. The rainfall lines go almost due north and south as you move westward across the State, with that approximate drop. You might vary it for a mountain or hill in a certain area, but the rainfall lines are almost due north and south with a decline of 1 inch in annual rainfall for each 15 miles you travel.

So you are getting into the dry area as you move west into the Rio Grande Basin. About 16 inches of rainfall represents the median area and about 9 inches in El Paso County.

With only 5 inches of rainfall we have a great population boom in San Diego, Calif. So we see that people like these areas of lesser rainfall if they can find reservoir water from rivers.

In view of the great population increase that is expected here and with the development of Big Bend International Park here in this part of Texas which was created just about the time of World War II without time yet for full development, this water will be needed for irrigation; it will be needed for people to use for industrial and domestic purposes.

The industrial and domestic use brings up another phase of this matter, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. That is the power development. I for one would hate to see this Government spend this vast amount of money for this dam and channel all that power into an exclusive contract with one power company.

I think this matter of the REA bidding has real merit in it. We should encourage other bids for equitable distribution of this power, rather than say the feasibility of this is only proved by letting Central Power & Light have all the power.

I can't believe that the feasibility of this program will depend upon 2 percent of that money being returned from one power and light company. I say, let them bid on it.

With this coming population surge, the demand for this power is going to be great. The present demand is only a small sample of the projected demand for the next 5, 10, or 15 years.

In that connection, I desire to point out that the population in this country since World War II has increased from 140 million in 1945 to 176 million in 1957-a gain of 36 million persons. Out of that population increase, Texas has gained more than any other State except California.

We have the States Nevada, Florida, and Arizona, and possibly Alaska that would lead in pure percentage gains, but I am referring to gross number of people in the increase. That is true whether we consider the population increase for the past 5 years, the past 10 years,

or the past 15 years. In either one of those three units of time the population of Texas will have gone up more than the population of any State except California.

As cities have grown large, we see a greater and greater expansion. For example, El Paso is one city with a jump in population of hundreds of thousands in recent years.

I think, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, that the great increased need for water is well established by the evidence, namely: (1) with the increased need in all of these areas below the dam, (2) with the increased needs above the dam, (3) with the need for protection from these floods, (4) with the actual proven damage of 1954, and (5) with the threatened damage of another great flood that again threatened this lower valley within the past 3 years where I think we had to dynamite some dikes there to let water out into that floodway to prevent a great flood in the lower valley in 1957.

Mr. KILGORE. Even with everything that could be done, there was very major damage in 1958.

Senator YARBOROUGH. And major damage to the extent that even Brownsville might have been covered by water.

Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, when we consider (1) the great population in these two counties [indicating on map] that have been pointed out as 2 of the 10 most populous counties in Texas; (2) the rapid increase that is expected in this area from the building of the model city of a million and a half, east of El Paso; and (3) with the surge to the drier climates of the Southwest, the need is pressing and the need is great.

I want to again repeat that I have sympathy for the claims of all those who have old established water rights. I think provision can be made to settle those equities as the dam is constructed, or even after it is finished. It shouldn't hold up this protection for people because of these difficult problems of rights and equitable problems of the right

to water.

We should provide for power development in the dam and leave it open for bids as to how it is used and not funnel that into one exclusive channel. That would be my recommendation.

I appreciate greatly the kindness of the committee in permitting me a few minutes to testify here. I haven't gone into the treaty rights. You have that in this very fine report written by Colonel Hewitt and others.

I haven't gone into these other points, engineering points that will be covered by others, and I deem it unnecessary to repeat that.

I merely wanted to go into the general considerations of the area that I think will be of interest to the committee, which may not be covered in the specific recommendations of scientific men whose scientific aims and work lead them into particular areas.

Mr. SELDEN. Thank you very much, Senator.

If any of the subcommittee members have questions, will you so indicate.

Mr. Fascell.

Mr. FASCELL. Senator, I just have one. It is your personal opinion, then, that power should be developed and left open for bid by whatever customers might be available?