I have seen those things happen time and time again all over the Mississippi Basin, in the North and the South and the same thing applies to the basins out in California, and particularly to this basin, which is a key basin. I have been connected with it, as I say, now, for some 9 years, and the losses out there in the past have been terrific. My neighbors out there are wonderful people. They are willing and have been freely putting up a lot of money to take care of themselves. From the standpoint of the welfare of that part of the country, as well as the United States as a whole, and particularly with regard to the three railroads, this is a very important project. In case of another great emergency, in the event of another great flood, the whole of southern California could be without railroad transportation for every one of the important industrial areas. And personally, I regard it as a very important undertaking, Mr. Chairman, and I hope the committee will act favorably on it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Macleay.
Mr. MACLEAY. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF M. E. SALSBURY, SENIOR ASSISTANT CHIEF ENGINEER, LOS ANGELES COUNTY FLOOD-CONTROL DISTRICT

Mr. DAVIS. We will hear at this time Mr. Salsbury, of the Los Angeles County flood-control district.

Mr. MCDONOUGH. Mr. Chairman, may I say that Mr. Salsbury is an engineer of the Los Angeles County flood-control district, and has been for many years, and is perhaps as familiar with the problems in this area as the Army engineers themselves, inasmuch as he has the obligations of maintaining the projects that have been constructed. Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Salsbury, I believe you have a prepared statement which you may, if you like, insert in the record and give us an oral summary of it.

Mr. SALSBURY. Mr. Chairman, my name is M. E. Salsbury. I am senior assistant chief engineer, Los Angeles County flood-control district. With your permission, I should like to file for the record a brief statement.

Mr. DAVIS. Without objection, it will be included in the record. (The statement referred to follows:)

STATEMENT OF M. E. SALSBURY, SENIOR ASSISTANT CHIEF ENGINEER, LOS ANGELES COUNTY FLOOD-CONTROL DISTRICT, CALIFORNIA, TO THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 23, 1949

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, we appreciate this opportunity to appear before your committee on behalf of the Los Angeles County drainage-area project. I will not take up your time in attempting to show the great need for flood protection in Los Angeles County, since that has been so adequately covered in testimony before your committee at previous hearings and has been recognized by the Congress in the various Flood Control Acts.

I am here to emphasize the need for further authorization for our project to assure a continued and orderly construction program aimed at completion of the project within a reasonable period of time. We believe that in order to accomplish this an additional authorization in the present bill of at least $75,000,000 is necessary, and you are urgently requested to recommend this amount to the Congress.

The Flood Control Act of 1941 approved the general comprehensive plan for flood control in Los Angeles County, known as the Los Angeles County drainagearea project, and provided partial authorization for it. The current estimated cost

to the Federal Government is $328,486,000, and the current total authorization, provided in 1936, 1938, 1941, 1944, and 1946, is $157,541,000. This leaves a balance of authorization required to complete the entire project of approximately $171,000,000.

The Corps of Engineers has been working on this project since 1936. Several of the units have been completed and a number are under construction. Allotments to date to the project amount to $89,740,000. With an anticipated appropriation of approximately $12,500,000 for the fiscal year 1950, there is a remainder of authorization of but $55,300,000, and this amount is fully obligated to cover the balance of cost of units now under construction.

In order to determine the amount of additional authorization needed at this time, it is necessary to consider the rate at which construction should proceed to complete the entire Los Angeles County drainage-area project within a reasonable period of time, giving consideration to the needs of the area for protection, to proper planning, and to programing of construction.

The Los Angeles County flood-control district has made a careful study of these factors as applied to the remaining units of the project, resulting in a recommended program for completing the project in 8 years.

It is significant to note that completion of most of the flood-control projects in the United States now authorized by Congress has been recommended within a 6-year period by the Chief of Engineers.

The program we recommend calls for appropriations in the order of $40,000,000 in fiscal year 1951, $30,000,000 in 1952 and $25,000,000 annually for several years thereafter.

We believe it is essential from the standpoint of good planning to provide a backlog of authorization to extend over at least a 4-year period. Therefore, based on the above program, an additional authorization of not less than $75,000,000 is now required; or, if it is the view of the Corps of Engineers and your committee that authorization is obligated for the full cost of a unit once construction is started, then authorization is now required in excess of $100,000,000.

Such authorization will permit appropriations for a 4-year construction period for the Los Angeles County drainage area project including completion of the Whittier-Narrows Flood Control Basin by 1952. It will allow the necessary time for orderly and efficient advance planning and for coordination of a large and complex construction program by the Corps of Engineers.

The residents of Los Angeles County are not seeking special consideration or favors. Our flood-control district has raised and spent $85,000,000 of its own funds on flood-control and conservation works. We believe that we have ourselves helped solve our flood-control probloms to a far greater degree than has any other local area in the United States, and we will continue to do so to the utmost of our ability.

Los Angeles is continuing to grow, not only in population but industrially. Today, we have 4,000,000 people in Los Angeles County. It is a metropolitan district serving a vast area of the West in many ways. Unfortunately, it is also subject to tremendous flood hazards. The effects of major floods in this metropolitan center are of national significance.

The reasons are apparent, we believe, for the very great necessity of completing this flood-control project just as soon as possible, and to accomplish this, we urge that your committee recommend the additional authorization required to carry on construction at an appropriate rate.

Mr. SALSBURY. You are familiar with the Los Angeles County project, I am sure, since it was one the first ones that was authorized in 1936, and you have heard considerable about it ever since.

My being here today is to request the committee to recommend an additional authorization for this project of approximately $75,000,

000.

As Colonel Gee informed you, this project was originally authorized in 1936 for an amount of $70,000,000 for the project as a whole, which was approved in the 1941 Flood Control Act.

In addition, authorizations were granted in 1941, 1944, and 1946. The total Federal cost of the project, again to review what Colonel Gee stated, is $328,000,000, and the total authorization at the present time is $157,000,000.

The allotments for construction to date against that authorization, plus what is proposed to be appropriated in the present fiscal year will come to slightly in excess of $100,000,000, leaving a balance of about $55,000,000 authorization, but that is all currently obligated against units of the project which are now under construction, so that in order to proceed with the project we must have additional authorization at this time.

We sincerely believe that the project can and should be completed in 8 years. I should mention that most of the projects in the country are recommended by the Chief of Engineers to be completed in a period of 6 years; for this project it is slightly over 8 years. And, the Whittier-Narrows Dam, a unit of the project, is to be completed in 3 years, as appropriations have already started it. We will need appropriation for the project in the order of about $40,000,000 for the fiscal year 1951 and about $31,000,000 for 1952, and $25,000,000 for several years afterward.

In order to plan as complex a project as this we feel that the Corps of Engineers and the district, which is the local agency, needs to know about 4 years in advance what units are going to be constructed. Therefore to carry on this program, which I have mentioned, will require an authorization now of about $75,000,000 for a 4-year period.. And if you consider that none of the units is started the authorization then to complete the units as obligated, in order to complete in a 4-yearperiod, we will need in excess of $100,000,000 authorization.

Gentlemen, our district does not come to your committee emptyhanded, as has been mentioned previously. We have spent over $85,000,000 of our own local taxes on flood control, conservation works, most of which is in cooperation with this project. The State of California has approved an authorization on behalf of the State, which goes along with the other flood-control projects in the State, and which will help to finance it.

Therefore, on behalf of the 4,000,000 people who live in Los Angeles County now we urge your committee to recommend this additional authorization of around $75,000,000, and I would also like to urgeyour favorable consideration of the Santa Ana project which has been discussed in our neighboring counties, Orange and Riverside, as a very worthy project.

Mr. MCDONOUGH. Mr. Salsbury referred to 4,000,000 people in the Los Angeles drainage area. That is a conservative estimate of the present population which has been increasing during and since the war. The last figures I had were that it was increasing at the rate of 26,000 people a month coming into the State of California, and 70 percent of that increase is going into southern California, which is principally to Los Angeles County, San Bernardino, and Orange County.

He also mentioned the fact that the tax-levying district spent about $85,000,000 of its own tax funds as compared to a total appropriation of $87,000,000 of the Federal Government since the original budget, so that the difference between what we have spent of our own money and Federal money is very slight compared to most other

areas.

I do not know of any area where there is more diversified industry, where there are more diversified agricultural interests and more prop

erty that is subject to damage by flood than in the Los Angeles drainage area.

Over the years, because of the demand for homes, subdividers have been given the privilege of building in areas that were supposed not to be in the normal flow of the streams, but we find that in a flash flood, and a large flood, in these stream beds where normally the streams flows towns have been washed out.

I have seen boulders half the size of this room washed down the precipitous sides of the mountains and go right through buildings and destroy towns and buildings. So, the amount we are asking for for the reestablishment of much of the wealth of southern California, putting it back on the assessment rolls is small in comparison. In other words, the total valuation of property in Los Angeles County is about $4,000,000,000. That is the assessed valuation, and in order to protect a large part of that $4,000,000,000, the Federal Government up to now has contributed $87,000,000, and the county of Los Angeles has contributed $85,000,000, and we are asking now because of the increase in population that additional authorizations be granted so that we can supply additional work and complete it, not within the 6year period that the Army engineers have recommended, but within an approximate 8-year period, so that we will not lose the lives and we will not lose the property of many thousands of people from your States.

Most of the people who come to California are from States in other parts of the United States who come out there to make a living.

There is another thing that I think we ought to realize, and I think it has not been emphasized in any of these hearings, and that is we are approaching a period where in the heavily populated areas there is an unemployment problem developing.

According to the last figures from California, there are some 500,000 people who are unemployed, and whatever the figures are in the State of California, Los Angeles County has about 70 percent of the problem, so that we have a large number of unemployed, and anything in the way of public works that will absorb any of these people who come there without any assurance of employment, that will provide employment for them, we should be thinking of now instead of waiting until it becomes too big and then having to seek authorizations for public works on the spur of the moment like we did all during the thirties when we had to look to WPA projects to provide employment. I just wanted to include that as an important phase of this project.

Mr. PICKETT. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the gentleman a question? Mr. DAVIS. Yes, Mr. Pickett.

Mr. PICKETT. I am interested in your unemployment situation. Maybe you build structures differently in that area than in some places I have seen, but most of those construction projects that I know anything about require comparatively little besides skilled personnel to do the work. They do not take the pick and shovel crowd that are generally first unemployed, but take very few of them on that type of work. How is that going to help your unemployment situation?

Mr. MCDONOUGH. Mr. Pickett, the situation as far as skilled and unskilled labor employment in Los Angeles is concerned is very grave. We had a large number of skilled men during the war in various

capacities, they were engaged in shipyard building, aviation construction, and they were engaged in any number of industries, in the steel industry and otherwise that are now finding it difficult to hold their jobs. There is plenty of skilled labor available. There is plenty of moderately skilled labor, and plenty of unskilled labor available that would badly need jobs that works of this kind would provide. Mr. DAVIS. Are there any further questions?

Mr. LARCADE. In connection with the remarks of the distinguished gentleman from California, it is my opinion that the very purpose of and the very reason for these hearings that we are now conducting is for the purpose of making authorizations to provide a backlog of projects and public works for the very reason that you state.

I think that the main purpose for the consideration of all of these projects throughout the country by this committee at this time is particularly for that reason, in order that there may be on the books authorizations ready for appropriations for the construction of all of these projects scattered throughout the various parts of the United States for the very purpose of relieving anticipated unemployment.

Mr. MCDONOUGH. As a matter of fact, this authorization, if granted, would not add to the budget burden of the country, but it would have passed the stage of hearings and investigations and be ready for the Appropriations Committee to act upon in the event we concluded we needed to supply work or employment.

STATEMENT OF FRANK MOGLE, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIF.

Mr. DAVIS. Is Frank Mogle, chairman of the Board of Supervisors of San Bernardino County, in the room?

Mr. MOGLE. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS. We will be glad to hear you at this time, Mr. Mogle. Mr. MOGLE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Frank Mogle. I am chairman of the Board of Supervisors of San Bernardino County.

We have prepared, along with the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, this little statement of our Riverside board, explaining somewhat the problem involved in the Santa Ana River project.

I would also like to introduce a letter from Mayor Cunningham, endorsing the project.

Mr. Davis. All right, sir.

Mr. MOGLE. Then you have, as I understand it, a letter from the State water resources board, signed by Edward Hyatt, endorsing the project, and also which has been endorsed by the Governor of the State of California.

(The matter referred to is as follows:)

STATEMENT BY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT

It is our understanding that the Report on Survey of Santa Ana River and Tributaries, California, for Flood Control, by the United States Engineer's Office, Los Angeles, Calif., has been referred to and approved by appropriate governmental agencies and now has been submitted by the Secretary of War to your committee for further action.