Harrison County 1. Town of Corydon is already engaged with U.S. Corps of Engineers in a flood prevention project. 2. County is initiating comprehensive land use planning and zoning in cooperation with Indiana University and HHFA. 3. Towns of Ramsey and Elizabeth are seeking to develop municipal water systems. 4. Big Indian Creek watershed is being planned under Public Law 566 (involving three counties). It is expected to be a base for recreation-tourist industry for that community. Perry County 1. Watershed projects are being studied on Anderson River and on Middle Fork River. Both are vital to economic growth of the area. 2. Perry County is actively promoting recreation-tourism as an industry. 3. Efforts are underway to secure a bridge across the Ohio River at Cannelton, Ind. The town is now cooperating with HEW in modernizing its sewer system and waterworks. Spencer County 1. Striving to develop tourist-recreation industry. Dedicated Lincoln National Boyhood Park in 1962. 2. Towns of St. Meinard and Grandview are currently investigating water systems. Watershed development and multipurpose impoundments will probably provide water supply. Much of the action is so far directed to improvement in the small rural towns and villages because assistance available from State and Federal agencies such as HEW, HHFA, and ARA is more generally applicable to urban areas. The people of the Lincoln Hills project feel that the resource conservation and development project approach will help to put natural resource development on an equal footing with other State and Federal assistance available in the project area. Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. I will make this comment, Mr. Chairman. The very recent designation by the Secretary of the 10 pilot areas, the actual development in the project areas to date, are rather limited, but the degree to which that information is available will be placed in the record. Mr. WHITTEN. Does the budget provide for carrying forward of any unused funds? Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir, it does, $1,075,000 into 1965. Mr. WHITTEN. Do you have any knowledge of just what is contemplated for the future? Is that again dependent on the budget? Do you have plans for this program reaching beyond the pilot stage? Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, it would be my opinion that the pilot program activity will prove to be successful. I think it is based upon a sound concept. That sound concept is the same one which, in principle, has guided soil conservation district activities and the small watershed activities. This is the concept of local responsibility of program formulation, programs developed around local community problems, in which they can project the things that need to be done, and these projects being non-Federal projects but with assistance by the local, State, and Federal governments. We believe that to a considerable extent similar to the Public Law 566 watershed, that this concept will prove to be successful. I think that we cannot prejudge the final result until the pilot projects are further along. Mr. WHITTEN. What are those 10 areas? Could you supply those for the record? Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. We will be glad to supply those for the record. (Requested information follows:) AUTHORIZATION FOR PLANNING ASSISTANCE ON RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT APPLICATIONS Authorization is granted to the concerned State conservationists to provide planning assistance to the following local organizations, on the specified project areas, for making investigations and surveys as may be necessary to develop resource conservation and development project plans as specified in Secretary's memorandum No. 1515 for meeting Department responsibilities under an authorization in the Food and Agriculture Act of 1962 (Public Law 87-703). This program is now being implemented with funds provided in the Department of Agriculture appropriations for 1964. 1,518, 080 Mercer County Soil Conservation 2,426,820 Swift County Soil and Water Conser- 635, 200 White River Soil Conservation District, White River Valley Development Corp. 2,880, 113 Taos Soil and Water Conservation District, Espanola Valley Soil and Water Conservation District, Abiquiu-Vallecitos Soil and Water Conservation District, Pojoaque-Santa Cruz Soil and Water Conservation District, County Commission of Rio Arriba County, County Commissioners of Santa Fe County, County Commissioners of Taos County, Council of the Town of Espanola, Council of the City of Santa Fe, Council of the Town of Taos, New Mexico State Park and Recreation Commission, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. Fort Randall Conservancy Subdistrict, Charles Mix Soil and Water Conservation District, Emanuel-Choteau Creek Soil and Water Conservation District, Scotland Soil and Water Conservation District. 1,068, 440 NEED FOR NEW RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM Mr. WHITTEN. Take the first one listed. I don't happen to know what it is. In all likelihood the Rural Electrification Administration has a borrower there, a local cooperative. This area is also probably a part of the soil conservation district. I am certain that it is also a beneficiary of the agricultural conservation program. It also has the benefit of the Extension Service and county agents. It likely may be part of the rural development program. And I am sure it is eligible for participation in the area redevelopment phase that applies to rural areas. It also is eligible for loans by the Farmers Home Administration. With all that, tell me what else in the world you can do there. Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. The first project is one listed in Indiana. It involves four counties, Spencer, Crawford, Harrison, and Perry, with an area of something over a million acres. It involves four soil conservation districts in that area who are the principal sponsors of the proposal. I might add, Mr. Chairman, that in addition to the items you mentioned as being available to the area Mr. WHITTEN. I should have added to that list, its wonderful representation in Congress. I don't know who the Congressman is but every district is well represented here, Mr. Williams. Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. In addition to the items you mentioned there is available to the area and very applicable to it the small watershed program, Public Law 566, which in this particular area has proven, through some of the illustrations that we discussed earlier, that there are watershed projects in which there are land use adjustments and some reforestation. There are recreational opportunities involved with the Public Law 566 work of a public nature, also this is an area in which there has been a large amount of land use shifting taking place over the years, and one in which there are many people who need additional economic opportunities for their employment, the use of the land and water resources in this area, partly developed through Public Law 566 and partly otherwise. We think the resource conservation and development project will provide additional opportunities beyond what the regular programs will do. Actually, until the local people develop their long-range program and their specific proposals, we are not in a position to state specifically just what they will propose to include in their project program. But it is my understanding that in this particular location they will propose a long-range program of total land use projected into the future, recognizing what land should remain-can profitably remain in agriculture, recognizing the opportunities for private recreational developments as well as the public kind, and of tying together some of the opportunities of the nonfarming residents of the area with the farming residents. Mr. WHITTEN. Mr. Williams, earlier I had read to you this State Department bulletin by the Agency for International Development, in which the U.S. Government guarantees against political risk, and a lot of other things. Do you think with time that, through this program, you might give to the American citizen the same thing that our Government offers these folks in foreign countries under the AID program? Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, not if I have anything to do with the program. It will not go in that direction. Mr. WHITTEN. You don't mean you are opposed to giving our own citizens what we are giving the citizens of foreign countries? Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, to make my position clear, I think that the kind of a program that can be, and I believe will be, developed in these resource conservation and development projects by the citizenry of the area, by the people who live there, who I think have good judgment, will be sound. The soil conservation district supervisors and bankers and so forth locally who are projecting a program into the future will make it sound. I think that through this resource conservation and development project, by providing some accelerated technical help geared around the particular community projects that will have to be very largely carried out by the people of the area, with some degree of loans from private sources as well as public; that these projects can help to bring about the adjustments in land and water use and provide new opportunities for those people on very largely a self-help basis. Mr. WHITTEN. Mr. Williams, I have the highest regard for you and the Secretary and for the fine work the Department does. But again, it strikes me that, with regard to many, many of these things, we seem to be just pyramiding with stars in our eyes and with the greatest of high hopes and expectations. I repeat again, I don't know the counties involved here. But where the area is eligible to borrow money for REA purposes, where the people there are eligible to borrow money for rural housing, where they have available the county extension service, where they have the Farmers Home Administration with its authority to lend credit, where a watershed district is eligible to borrow funds from the Farmers Home Administration to put up their watersheds and to harness and improve the watersheds, and where they are eligible for all these other Government programs, I can't for the life of me see how you can justify an additional governmental setup. Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, may I say first of all that there will not be an additional organization, but anything that would be done through these projects will be done through the existing organizations, both the local organizations and State and Federal agencies. I think, perhaps, Mr. Chairman, one of the very real benefits that will come from these projects-at least I would hope so-would be that in the process of developing a long-range program for that interrelated four-county area in Indiana, as an example, would be how do you fit these various things together with the most effectiveness to get the job done that needs to be done in that area, and what part of that total job is it proper for the Federal Government, specifically the Department of Agriculture, to take. I would not anticipate that this should develop into a Federal proposition and be financed entirely by the Federal Government. Mr. WHITTEN. I think the desire by the President to do something to help the lot of those who are poverty stricken, to help them to help themselves, and to prevent poverty in the future, is certainly a worthy objective. If we have a program directed toward relieving or preventing poverty, and if in turn we should have a domestic Peace Corps to straighten out the youth of the area, without these two elements, would there be any justification for the new organization in these four counties? Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, it would seem to me that perhaps a locally developed program, built around the particular resources that they have, the physical resources and their opportunities for development in the area, might point the way as to whether or not a domestic Peace Corps or youth conservation camp or some other device might be needed in that area, and if so what it would do. I believe in the principle of local planning by local people with the help of the Federal Government, rather than the reverse. This program proposal on a strictly pilot basis is headed in that direction. I would hope that the long-range benefits from it would be the wiser expenditure of both local private-local public resources, as well as the Federal resources in the area. DESIGNATION OF PILOT AREAS Mr. WHITTEN. Mr. Williams. I honestly think that we have a real problem when we have so many agencies. I don't know of any particular agency that under this manpower ceiling isn't going to be hard put to carry on its present activities. By the same token, we are getting so many plans over plans and so many folks with certain responsibilities and certain places in the sun, that I wonder how we are going to keep this thing straight. Going back, what kind of survey did you make to determine where you would place these pilot programs? Did somebody make a survey? What did that consist of? Mr. D. A. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, the information with respect to the concept of resource conservation and development projects was disseminated through the Department of Agriculture not only to the Soil Conservation Service but to other agencies in the Department. A procedure was developed for local people to develop an application and to have an interest in looking into this kind of a proposal. This procedure involved review of any application by the Governor of the State, or the agency designated by the Governor before it was transmitted to the Soil Conservation Service here in Washington. Under that procedure there were some 18 or 20 applications from local organizations in different parts of the country, most of them sponsored by soil conservation districts and county governments, all of which had been endorsed by the Governor of the State or his designated agency as being needed-as a desirable project to fit this concept explained earlier. From this total number of applications, and taking into account that the number had been limited on a pilot basis to 10, there were discussions among the agencies here in Washington, and in the Secretary's Office, as to what 10 locations would be designated. I might point out, Mr. Chairman, that the first project designated by the Secretary was the one in Indiana, to which I referred. This is a project he personally visited and talked with local people and observed the opportunities that seem to be there to have a stepped up rural areas development program in that area. |