PART B.-MATERIALS SUBMITTED BY HAROLD E. ALEXANDER, SPECIAL ADVISOR, ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, STATE OF ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING ARKANSAS Department of PLANNING, Hon. HENRY REUSS, U.S. House of Representatives, House Office Building, DEAR CONGRESSMAN REUSS: The Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife has informed me that your committee is interested in obtaining information concerning watershed development (556) projects, and particularly data on costs and benefits as they may relate to the allocation of special benefits to special interests. Although it is our business to review environmental impact statements on Federal water and other resource development projects, our opportunities to examine the relative costs and benefits claimed for these projects are limited, because of time limitations and due to the involved and complicated manner in which project reports are often written. I have prepared comments on some of these projects recently, and I have on hand a copy of a report prepared by the staff of the biology department at the State College of Arkansas, which examines rather specifically the large allocation of monetary benefits to landowners within a particular watershed basin. In reference to these benefits claimed (in project justifications), and the hidden subsidies to individual landowners, I would note that these benefits cover all of the landowners in the basin, many of which may not be protected by project measures, or receive only very limited protection from periodic flooding of alluvial lands. I hope this information will be of some significance, and I am sorry that we do not have more data available in the way of information at this time. I would comment, further, that those of us who are engaged in the review of projects of this type, including water projects developed by the Corps of Engineers, find that the volume of these materials is far beyond the capabilities of the limited number of State or local officials to review and evaluate. In our view, the entire subject of water project planning and development needs reevaluation, and the type of evaluation recently completed by the National Water Commission, with their recommendations, is most pertinent to the problems encountered by those of us who are concerned with the damaging effects of many types of water projects. For your information, I am enclosing a copy of our comments on the Water Commission report. I am also enclosing a recently completed report on the Bayou Meto Basin, which was prepared primarily by the Department of Agriculture, and some other pertinent materials. Those of us who are concerned with resource management applaud your efforts to stop or limit the channeling of streams, which has been a part of the watershed development program administered by the SCS. I would also observe that we are concerned about the efforts of other structural measures (particularly dams) used in projects for flood control and water management. I wish to offer any possible assistance in your efforts, and I will be glad to have you call on me for any help I can provide in your efforts to protect streams, wetlands, and other natural resources in this country. Sincerely yours, HAROLD E. ALEXANDER, Special Advisor, Environmental Affairs. [NOTE. The enclosures commenting on the National Water Commission report and some of the other data submitted by Mr. Alexander are in the subcommittee files.] [Excerpts from "Fact Sheet-Cache River/Bayou DeView drainage project, Arkansas," and related materials-Citizens Committee to Save the Cache River Basin, Stuttgart, Ark.] The Cache River and its major tributary, Bayou DeView, form an important watershed of the lower Mississippi River Valley. The Cache rises in southern Missouri and flows halfway down the length of the State of Arkansas before it meets the White River. Bayou DeView is a parallel stream which rises in Crowleys Ridge in northeast Arkansas and joins the Cache 6 miles above its confluence with the White. The upper reaches of the Cache and DeView were ditched in the early part of the century by local farming interests. An authorized Corps of Engineers flood control project proposes to re-dig and enlarge the drainage canals in the upper watersheds of the Cache-DeView as well as ditch the lower reaches of the two streams. The Cache River channelization project, authorized under the Flood Control Act of 1950, was initiated in July of 1972. Four miles of ditching was finished and 6 miles of right-of-way had been cleared before an injunction on all construction was issued by Federal District Court in Little Rock, March 8, 1973. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rates the Cache-DeView bottomlands "among the highest quality remaining within the lower Mississippi flyway [and] of both national and international significance for waterfowl." Project purpose.-The project is basically designed to provide flood control in the form of drainage that will enhance the value of existing agricultural lands in the bottoms as well as to dry out wetlands, making more room for row-crop production. With the Cache River and Bayou DeView straightened out into ditches, the water will be rushed rapidly off downstream. The woodlands adjacent to the streams can then be cut down, drained, and turned into cropland for soybeans. Environmental impact.-The overflow bottomland along the Cache River and Bayou DeView is the most critical wildlife habitat in eastern Arkansas (the |