of Engineers.

I hope members of the House will find time to read through the hearings and note the discrepancy between the costs estimated by the Engineers when the project was initiated and the cost when completed.

"Of course costs of construction and material have risen sharply as inflation proceeded, but not enough to account for anything like the wide differences you will find in the hearings. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that they were either incompetent or deliberately misleading."

For other comments on the Corps of Engineers, see Big Dam Foolishness, by Elmer Peterson, Devin-Adair, New York: 1954. Muddy Waters by Arthur Maass, Harvard University Press, Cambridge: 1951, includes the following statement by former Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes:

"No more lawless or irresponsible federal group than the Corps of Army Engineers has ever attempted to operate in the United States, either outside or within the law."

Dr. Morgan Answers Senator Clark

We are told by Senator Clark that "The delay in constructing the Kinzua Dam has cost thousands of people untold suffering from devastating floods which hit the Allegheny Valley every year." We commented earlier (page 4) on the understandable public impatience and how to satisfy it in the public interest. The following statement by Dr. Arthur Morgan in his March 14, 1961 letter to President Kennedy must be added to any discussion of delay:

"After opposing reservoirs for Pittsburgh for twenty years, and
after dealing in a leisurely manner with the issue for another
twenty years, since its judgment was questioned the Corps of
Engineers has endeavored to create in Pittsburgh a feeling that
reconsideration of Kinzua would leave Pittsburgh open to flood
catastrophe, which danger would be effectively removed by build-
ing Kinzua. Two considerations stand out: First, Kinzua would
protect against only 10 percent of the watershed above Pittsburgh.
It would be an important, but minor factor in complete protection.
Second: Because the alternative plan (Conewango-Cattaraugus) would
be so much simpler and so much less concentrated than Kinzua, and
so much less affected by high water, it could be completed sooner
than Kinzua."

Many technical issues are still in dispute and no impartial evidence is yet available to Congress to settle them:

Which plan has greater benefits in relation to cost?

Which plan costs more to construct?

Since Conewango would affect more land and more people,

what kind of land and what are the interests of the people?

Which plan offers superior flood protection, water storage,
recreation opportunities, conservation?

About all we know for sure, without dispute, is that both plans are recognized by the Corps of Engineers as feasible, but Kinzua violates a treaty.

"The Land Is Your Mother"

Senator Clark asserts, "The erection of this dam will cause no great and unnecessary loss to the Seneca Indians, all of whose property rights will be protected by eminent domain proceedings." Throughout our history few Americans have understood the American Indian concept of land. It seems eminently fair to most Americans to take land so long as it is paid for. To the Senecas and to most American Indians, land is not compensable. "The land is your mother. You do not sell your mother."

..THROUGH AMERICAN INDIAN EYES

In order to understand the Kinzua controversy, Americans with different cultural backgrounds have to look at the Seneca problem through American Indian eyes. In 1960 when Mr. George Heron was President of the Seneca Nation of Indians, he made the following statement to the House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs:

"My name is George D. Heron. I live on the Allegany Reservation in
New York, and I am president of the Seneca Nation of Indians. I
appear before this Subcommittee today as an official representative
of my people to express once again their unaltered opposition to
construction of the Kinzua Dam. As you know, this project will
flood the heart of our reservation homeland, which we Senecas have
peacefully occupied since the Treaty of November 11, 1794, under
the protection of the United States, and will force the relocation
of more than 700 members of the Nation.

"Before starting the main part of my remarks this morning, I would like to clear up several misstatements which were made to this Sub

committee during the hearings yesterday. My friends from Pennsylvania seem to believe that some Senecas are willing to sell their lands. I do not know where these witnesses got their information, though I suppose every group, even an Indian nation, contains a few unhappy people who will sell out their birthright. I do know that the overwhelming majority of my people, including every councilman and other tribal leader, both in and out of office, is trying desperately to save our reservation.

The thought that we would free

ly give up the lands of our ancestors, which we are pledged to hold for our children yet unborn, is so contrary to the Seneca way of life that it is not even considered seriously.

"Next my friends from Pennsylvania have said that the Treaty of November 11, 1794, was abrogated when all Indians became citizens in 1924. I would like to point out that the 1794 Treaty was signed by the Seneca Nation, not by individual Seneca Indians, and the Nation has not yet become a citizen. It remains today exactly what it was 165 years ago--in the words of the courts as reported to us by our attorney, Mr. Lazarus, a 'quasi-sovereign dependent nation.' More important, our tribal lawyer tells me that the Supreme Court of the United States has held not once, but at least a dozen times, that the grant of citizenship does not affect any Indian treaty rights or in any other way change the special relationship of Indians and their property to the Federal Government. I am not an educated but it seems very strange to me that these lawyers from Pennsylvania are willing to say that the Supreme Court ruled against the Senecas, when it did not even hear the case, while at the same time they are ignoring a whole series of actual Supreme Court decisions which go against their arguments.

man,

"I am proud to be an American citizen, and have four years in the United States Navy to prove it. I am just as proud to be a Seneca Indian. And I do not see any reason why I cannot be both.

"Now let me tell you a little bit about what the Kinzua Dam will do to my people. Our own census shows that over 700 members of the Nation or more than half the population of the Allegany Reservation will be forced to move by the reservoir. On paper, this does not seem like very many people: other lands, substitute

houses can be found say the supporters of the project. If you knew these Senecas the way I do, though, if you knew how much they love that land--the last remnant of the original Seneca country-you would learn a different story. To lose their homes on the reservation is really to lose a part of their life.

"The Corps of Engineers will tell you that Kinzua Dam will flood only 9,000 out of the 29,000 acres within the Allegany Reservation. What the Corps does not say is that this 9,000 acres includes almost all of the flat lowlands and fertile riverbanks, while the remainder of the Reservation is inaccessible and thus virtually uninhabitable mountainside. What the Corps also does not say is that during the dry season these 9,000 acres will not be a lake

but rather muck and mud flats. What a pleasant yearly reminder, what an annual memorial to the breaking of the 1794 Treaty that will be!

"Lastly, I know it will sound simple and perhaps silly, but the truth of the matter is that my people really believe that George Washington read the 1794 Treaty before he signed it, and that he meant exactly what he wrote. For more than 165 years we Senecas To us it is more than a contract, more than a symbol; to us, the 1794 Treaty is a way of life.

have lived by that document.

"Times have not always been easy for the Seneca people. We have known and we still know poverty and discrimination. But through it all we have been sustained by a pledge of faith, unbroken by the Federal Government. Take that pledge away, break our Treaty, and I fear that you will destroy the Senecas as an Indian community. "The Seneca Nation always has taken the position that we will abandon our opposition to the Kinzua Dam if and when it is shown by competent evidence that the existing plans of the Corps of Engineers are better than any alternative plans. The facts are that Dr. Morgan's study has revealed an alternative, the ConewangoCattaraugus plan, which appears superior to the authorized project. For this reason, we urge that the Committee pass H.J. Res. 703, which would provide an independent investigation of the merits of the two proposals.

"On behalf of the Seneca Nation, may I thank you for granting us this hearing."

A "HUNDRED-MILLION-DOLLAR BLUNDER"

"In fixing on the Kinzua Dam site more than thirty years ago, the Corps of Engineers made a colossal blunder or oversight in failing to discover the Conewango-Cattaraugus site, with diversion of excess flood waters into Lake Erie. As compared with Kinzua, choice of the Conewango Cattaraugus location would save the Seneca Indian reservation, would protect Pittsburgh from twice as great a flood as would Kinzua, and would entirely remove Upper Allegheny flood water from the Ohio, thus saving the need for spending probably more than $100,000,000 for additional reservoirs; and especially, Conewango Reservoir with its vast capacity would make possible the storage of three times as much water as would Kinzua for increasing low water flow in the Ohio River--and all this at less cost than Kinzua.

"With great salt beds underground, and with cheap water transportation for coal and sulphur, the upper Ohio River is destined to become the center of heavy chemical industry in America--provided that an adequate water supply is available. These industries discharge water into the same river from which Cincinnati, Louisville and other Ohio River cities will have to get their drinking water. The limiting factor is water. The Conewango basin is the only possibility for adequate storage for Upper Allegheny River water, and the least expensive storage on the whole Upper Ohio River.

"Necessity will compel the construction of the Conewango Reservoir, probably within twenty-five years. If Kinzua has been built, it will then stand as a useless monument to a hundred-million-dollar blunder, and to the violation by the United States of its unqualified solemn promise to the Seneca Nation of Indians.

"Rather than admit to this early engineering blunder and to a twenty-five-year failure to discover and correct it, the Engineer Corps has endeavored to cover up by explicit misstatements and misrepresentations, some of which are detailed in the accompanying statement. It was upon such extreme misstatement and misrepresentation that the Congress was persuaded to make appropriation for building the Kinzua Dam. The Corps of Engineers has adroitly avoided an independent, competent comparison of the two plans. Through such extreme misrepresentation, members of Congress, officials of the State of Pennsylvania and civic leaders of Pittsburgh have been led to commit themselves publicly to the construction of Kinzua. Now it is embarrassing and of questionable political strategy for them to reverse themselves and to favor an independent comparison of the two plans.

"Just as an industrial corporation must face the realities of life, must successfully compete, make money and remain solvent in order to serve the public with its products, but must do these things within the rules and standards of a civilized society--so it is with a public official. He must face political realities, but there are limits to the price he can honorably pay for the maintenance of position and influence."