Mr. CLARK. It would afford me great pleasure to sign that same report. I should like to sign my name to the report and concur in its conclusions.

Mr. HAYDEN. As one member of this committee I would like to have the views of Messrs. Murphy, Lippincott & Bernard on your plan for carrying water by a pressure tunnel from Boulder Canyon to Los Angeles.

Mr. RAKER. Might not those engineers be in the attitude that General Goethals expressed this morning, that too many men are afraid to get out of the beaten line, afraid to go ahead and do something? Mr. CLARK. I would not assume that an experienced engineer like Mr. Lippincott has made a mistake.

Mr. RAKER. Oh, yes; engineers can make mistakes.

Mr. CLARK. I was a resident of the city of New York when the proposed plan to provide a long tunnel for the water supply was regarded as the wildest sort of a dream, but now that tunnel is in use in New York. This Los Angeles tunnel would be 225 miles long and would cost $225,000,000. It would not be less than that.

Mr. HAYDEN. Would it cost a million dollars a mile to build such a tunnel?

Mr. CLARK. Yes; it would be one continuous tunnel, a pressure tunnel. The plan proposed by Maxwell to bring the water by open canal or flume which would have to be supported by a scaffold or by the grace of God, would be simply a dream. Mr. Swing stated the proposition clearly one time at San Diego. He said that Mr. Maxwell had the advantage over engineers because he was not tied down to the facts. The present population of the Los Angeles district will not justify $255,000,000, but the population there is growing very rapidly and the question of supplying several million people with water necessary for domestic uses, dollars do not mean anything, except as figures to work with as a matter of convenience. The question is to get the water there, without regard to cost. The present figure and water supply in the city of Los Angeles is 112 gallons per capita. I think the time will come when they will be allowed 200 gallons per capita. Two thousand second-feet in addition to their present supply will take care of about 8,000,000 people. I am not a Californian, but the people who live there tell me that the time is not very far away when the district will have that population.

Mr. RAKER. You would soon get the fever if you were there awhile. Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir; I think so.

Mr. RAKER. Yes, sure.

Mr. CLARK. But when you have 8,000,000 people there they have got to have water, and the city engineer of Los Angeles has already arrived at the conclusion that the Colorado River is the only adequate source of supply. I arrived at that conclusion 9 years ago, but it was then looked upon as a dream.

Mr. RAKER. Sometimes these dreams come true.

Mr. CLARK. Well, when it means a water supply to a city, it does come true. In the matter of the city water commission of New York, there is one water commission that has carried through its work without interference by politics and without scandal. If it is possible to do it in New York it can be done in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, when you take hold of a project of that kind it is too big

to play with. You put it through on a secure solid basis. It is too big for politics to deal with. It will go out of the hands of politicians into the hands of one man, a czar such as General Goethals described.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. You do not want the committee to understand that there was any politics in the building of your aqueduct in New York?

Mr. CLARK. In carrying out of the work, I think there was not. Mr. LEATHERWOOD. But so far as the commission was concerned, you think politics played some part?

Mr. CLARK. It was a pretty good commission. There was no scandal connected with it.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. You think it was a very fine job?
Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAKER. If the Government saw fit to build this dam and appropriate the money and provide in the bill that one man should be appointed with the necessary power and with the necessary salary commensurate with his duties, and fix his term so that it could not be monkeyed with, we would get results, would we not?

Mr. CLARK. Yes; all you have to do is to pick the right man in the first place.

Mr. RAKER. That is one thing and then fix his term so that he would not have to pass the buck around in different offices?

Mr. CLARK. You would have to put him exactly in the same position that President Roosevelt placed General Goethals in the construction of the Panama Canal. The only criticism I have ever had of this bill as it is pending now is that they can not see any way in which the power can be made to pay the interest and sinking fund charges on that investment during the period of development. Mr. RAKER. Why not?

Mr. CLARK. Because at the present time with a demand for only 200,000 horsepower a reasonable rate will not pay those charges, and the only solution I can see is to raise the rates to an almost prohibitive figure, let the water pay for part of it or secure Government assistance.

Mr. RAKER. That is, for the first couple of years?

Mr. CLARK. For the first five or eight years.

Mr. RAKER. Could not we get a little money out of the use of water for irrigation?

Mr. CLARK. That is what I propose in this alternate plan. I think the people who get the flood protection and the people who are bringing new lands under irrigation should pay for the water. at a fair rate.

Mr. RAKER. Is there any economic reason why anybody who can go in and take that undeveloped land there should not pay a reasonable amount for the use of the water?

Mr. CLARK. There is no reason at all that I can see. I think they should pay for the use of the water.

Mr. HAYDEN. There is a very good reason.

Mr. RAKER. I would like to hear it.

Mr. HAYDEN. The reason is that the farmers can not afford to pay it. When you take into consideration the cost of reclaiming the land, the cost of the diversion dams, the main canals and laterals. and operation and maintenance charges you soon get to the point

where the cost exceeds $75 per acre. When you expect a farmer to pay much more than that out of the products of the soil, you have just about reached the limit. If you add on top of that $2 an acre for the use of water, you make the project unfeasible.

Mr. CLARK. How much is it costing now to clean the ditches and canals of silt?

Mr. HAYDEN. The cost of cleaning the canals may be somewhat reduced, so far as silt is concerned, but it does not amount to as much as $2 per acre.

Mr. CLARK. I understand it amounts to more than that.

Mr. RAKER. What is the cost in the Imperial Valley for cleaning ditches?

Mr. CLARK. Colonel Fly can give you some information on that. Mr. CLARK. I understand that more than $2 per acre is the cost of keeping the ditches and canals open. With Boulder Canyon dam operating, the water would be free of silt, you would have a perfectly clear water.

Mr. HAYDEN. There would still be silt from the Gila, which is the most troublesome silt in the Imperial Valley.

Mr. CLARK. Well, it would be comparatively a small expense.

Mr. RAKER. When the dams are put in on the Gila and the other rivers there, there will be no silt coming from the Gila.

Mr. CLARK. A question was asked of General Goethals about taking water from the bottom of the reservoir. If you take water from the bottom of the reservoir and discharge the silt into the stream, you will not cure the condition existing at present. You will only continue to accumulate silt in the river bottom. Now when the flood waters reach 75,000 second-feet the bottom of the river begins to scour, but below 75,000 second-feet it is depositing silt. So that with the water under control, if you discharge the silt into the river channel you will have a worse condition than you have now, as all of the silt will remain in the channel and reduce the capacity.

The CHAIRMAN. We will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. Mr. Hamell, the general counsal for the Reclamation Service, will be the first witness, and Mr. Gray Silver will also be here and testify later.

(Thereupon, at 4.25 o'clock p. m., Thursday, March 20, 1924, the committee adjourned until to-morrow, Friday, March 21, 1924, at 10 o'clock a. m.)

COMMITTEE ON IRRIGATION AND RECLAMATION,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Friday, March 21, 1924.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., purusant to the adjournment, Hon. Addison T. Smith (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Mr. Swing wishes to make a statement.

Mr. SWING. Reference has been made several times to the refusal of the Federal Farm Loan Board to make loans in the Imperial Valley, and I have myself, when I was counsel for the Imperial Irrigation District, seen the correspondence in which they turned down all applications for loans in the Imperial Valley because of

two factors: The uncertainty of the water supply and the flood

menace.

When this committee had its hearing before, Mr. B. D. Irwin, representing the Farm Bureau, appeared here and as a part of his testimony read into the record a letter to him from W. H. Joyce, a member of the Federal Farm Loan Board, and I ask permission to read it again into the record as a part of these hearings. It is found in the previous hearings at pages 204 and 205. The original is in the files of the committee.

(The letter is here printed in full:)

Mr. B. D. IRVINE.

TREASURY DEPARTMENT,
Washington, May 16, 1922.

DEAR SIR: Pursuant to our conversation to-day, I desire to assure you I am heartily in favor of S. 3511, the bill recently introduced by Senator Johnson, of California.

If enacted into a law, the provision of this bill will, in my opinion, solve the major problems of the Imperial Valley, which are to my mind the questions of adequate, dependable water supply and the flood menace.

It goes without saying, that when these two problems are solved, general credit individually and collectively would be enhanced. In my opinion, the enhancement of this credit will tend to lower interest rates, and to render the financing of district improvements, such as drainage, etc., comparatively easy, and under more favorable conditions than have prevailed in the past.

As you are aware, I am somewhat acquainted with the general conditions of the Imperial Valley, and I should be glad indeed to render any assistance of which I am capable in promoting its welfare and future development. You are at liberty to call upon me any time I can be of assistance in advancing the interests of Imperial Valley.

Yours very truly,

W. H. JOYCE, Member Farm Loan Board.

Mr. SWING. The bill to which he refers is Senate 3511 and is substantially the same bill as has been introduced this year by myself, and which is now pending before this committee on which these hearings are being held.

Perhaps while waiting for Mr. Leatherwood you may be willing to hear Doctor Walker, a member of the Executive Board of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The CHAIRMAN. How much time will the doctor wish?
Mr. SWING. I think the Doctor will not take very long.
Doctor WALKER. A few minutes.

STATEMENT OF DR. W. H. WALKER, REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION

The CHAIRMAN. State your name and position.

Doctor WALKER. Dr. W. H. Walker. I am on the Board of Directors of the American Farm Bureau Federation, and I am in Washington working in the interest of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

My familiarity with this matter comes from living in California. For three years I was president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, then a year later I was vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, and I have been in contact with the agricultural people of this region and been all over the Imperial Valley, all over the State of California, and many times have criss

crossed the Imperial Valley in the agricultural work. The situa tion in the Imperial Valley at the present time relative to credit is that they are tremendously handicapped because of this menace, they are not on a parity with other people in the State on developments on a basis of credit. This handicap would be removed I am convinced if this project went through. The menace of a flood is tremendous, and the uncertainty of this water flow is constantly before them, and no place that I have ever been where a country has so wonderfully developed as the Imperial Valley, dependent absolutely upon a constant source of water supply, and when there is before them always the possibility, the remote possibility, that they are not going to have it, tends to prohibit permanent improvements that would be made if they could be sure of an absolutely permanent supply of water.

The objection that has been offered in some quarters-and we found that in our American Farm Bureau Federation, it was brought up-that we have now already an agricultural surplus and we do not need to put any more land under irrigation, and we are adding to the burden of agriculture if we do put under cultivation more agricultural land.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you expressing your opinion or repeating what somebody else has said? I was interrupted by the telephone and did not hear all you said.

Doctor WALKER. I will repeat that. There is an objection to this whole irrigation project of putting more land under irrigation because we have an exportable surplus that we are not getting rid of now. That is easily answered if anyone looks into the statistics of our production and consumption of the United States. In fact. several books have been written on that-our report of the Department of Commerce on nitrogen and soil survey; Mr. O. E. Baker, in the Department of Agriculture, has prepared a book on that, and all of these point to the fact that at the present time we are, from a financial standpoint, an importing nation, now, on food products, counting silks and spice-food and clothing. If you are to prepare to feed 150,000,000 people in 1950 much more must be produced. Many of the acres that were put under cultivation during the stimu lus of war or are being cultivated unprofitably at the present time. With the shrinking of the land area under cultivation, this land. which is very fertile land, and easily irrigated, must be the reserve upon which we will draw to feed people in the coming years.

This utilization of land is discussed very fully by Mr. Baker, and also in the Department of Commerce report on nitrogen. In 1923

Mr. HAYDEN. Is that a public document?

Doctor WALKER. That is a public document, yes, sir, this Department of Commerce report. It will be published in June. I helped to compile that.

The CHAIRMAN. But the Baker report is a private publication? Doctor WALKER. No; Baker's report is a public document; the title is, "The utilization of the soil," put out by the Department of Agriculture.

It is estimated now by the curves that we will eat up all of our surplus in about 1930, and even on our staple products we, will be importing our food.