2. The large expenditure of Federal funds, which I am going to refer to as taxpayers' money, where only a few can be expected to benefit; generally speaking those few being people who for reasons of economy knowingly placed their property in the path of floods. This large expenditure is one which will be repeated as the dams fail, if new sites are available.

3. An electric generation, the hydroelectric plant involves a heavy plant cost with low operating costs; the reverse being true with

steam.

This program means that the taxpayer is financing this heavy first cost as an adjunct of the flood-control dam. The power company is saved the expense of land purchase and construction.

4. Most important of all, and uniformly ignored, is the fact that this program of flood-control dams plans only to control the flood or waste water and slow its progress to the ocean. It makes no provision to reduce this waste, or return the water to where it is needed. It has no effect on the areas where 78 percent of flood damage is done.

The Forest Service and the Soil Conservation Service, both Federal and State, are young in the history of the country. They have conducted a laborious, uphill battle of education and demonstration since their beginnings.

The results are now becoming more and more apparent. They have worked with minimum appropriation of taxpayers' money and have uniformly depended on the cooperation of the landowner to put their flood-control practices into effect.

The effect of these practices is being widely felt, and the cooperative landowner is profiting as well.

It is in the work of these agencies of our Federal and State Governments, with the cooperation of the landowners, that we find effective long-range flood control without the large and recurring expenditure for flood-control dams, with their benefits to a limited view for a short period of time.

Now, our Forest Service-with control of fires, replanting, and planned timber management—is restoring our watersheds to the point where they can hold back our rains and feed the water slowly to our streams with no burden of topsoil.

Our Soil Conservation Service-with contour plowing, strip cropping, and the farm fishpond-is putting our farms on a paying basis, and at the same time reducing the loss of topsoil by flood.

These farm practices hold the water back and prevent the quick run-off experienced in the past from cultivated land.

The farm fishpond is of particular interest in comparison with flood-control dams.

The Buggs Island Dam-which I am using as an example here-it is not on this watershed, of course-will cost about $100,000,000 when completed. I don't believe the engineers' figures will agree with that at present, but from the last estimates taken, I think they will approach it before they get through.

It will take about 50,000 acres of bottom cropland out of production. Its beneficial effect as a flood-control dam will be felt only below the dam. At present costs, this $100,000,000 would build 100,000 3-acre farm fishponds. For each foot of depth available for flood

control, the Buggs Island Dam will give 50,000 acre-feet in the river channel for waste water.

The fishponds would cover 300,000 acre-feet scattered over the watershed, and holding the water where it can still be used.

It should be noted that the farm fishponds are paid for by the

owners.

These ponds would provide swimming, boating, and fishing at 100,000 different locations. Each properly managed pond could be expected to produce for table use from 450 to 1,350 pounds of fish per year.

In considering floods, the damage they cause, and their control, the question of maintenance of ground-water level is too frequently overlooked.

As our population shifts to the strip towns growing up along our highways, with their individual wells, an increasing burden is put on our ground water, and its level is steadily falling.

This is evidenced by the increasing number of springs and dug wells going dry each year.

If we are to continue our growth as a nation, this ground-water level must be maintained and restored. Flood-control dams offer no aid on this problem. The solution is in the practices advocated by the Soil Conservation Service and the Forest Service, and followed by the cooperating landowners.

With the growth of our cities, sites for city reservoirs are becoming more and more scarce. With most suitable sites containing floodcontrol dams that have silted up, we can find ourselves in a very difficult situation in 75 to 100 years, so far as location of new city reservoirs is concerned.

The adoption and furthering of a broad policy of restoration of our watersheds built around the proven practices of forest and farm management, as set out by the two services mentioned, offers a means of flood control at the source. The control is exerted at a point where the water can still be utilized for all purposes for which water can be used. The benefits are felt over the entire area. The cost, by comparison is low, and the returns are large.

On the other hand, the program of flood-control dams serves to reduce only a small amount of flood damage, returns no water to use, benefits a relatively small number of people, provides power as its only adjunct, and, due to the short life of the dams, can be considered only at a temporary expediency at great cost.

There is no question as to which policy holds out the greatest benefit there to the greatest number for the longest period of time.

The change from a program of flood-control dams to the policy of restoration of watersheds was made in the Potomac Basin on the insistence of the affected people. The same change of policy is desired in the James River Basin.

I thank you.

Senator MALONE. Are you familiar with the stream pollution bill, S. 418?

Mr. RANDOLPH. Not the Federal; I haven't had a chance to examine that. I know that we have a bill paralleling it, I believe, in Virginia, that has gone through quite recently, and we are having some test cases on it very soon.

Senator MALONE. But I had in mind the United States Senate bill passed here last year, which is now in the House, and provides for loaning money at a low rate of interest to cities with respect to stream pollution.

Mr. RANDOLPH. I knew that was under consideration.

Senator MALONE. We are not sure that it will pass the House, but I think it will.

Mr. RANDOLPH. I sincerely hope so.

Senator MALONE. Thank you, Mr. Randolph.

Senator ROBERTSON. Mr. Carrier?

Mr. LOTH. Mr. Chairman, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Mr. Lyman Carrier, who, for a number of years, was State conservationist, and, as I said a few minutes ago, during this time established an enviable record for himself, before his retirement as a conservationist both of soil and water.

Senator ROBERTSON. And I would like to add that during the period that he headed the soil conservation work in Virginia for the Federal Government, I had many and favorable contacts with him, and I thought he did an excellent job.

Senator MALONE. Dr. Carrier, will you identify yourself for the record, please.

STATEMENT OF LYMAN CARRIER, FORMER VIRGINIA STATE CONSERVATIONIST, BLACKSBURG, VA.

Mr. CARRIER. Lyman Carrier; retired.

My life work has been in the field of farming and agriculture, and so I will devote what I say to those phases of the question and leave out a number of things.

I dislike very much to have to disagree with a number of my good friends here who have spoken in favor of the dam. But I am not in favor of this dam program. And when I say "damn," I use the simplified spelling.

I had a secretary one time who got the spirit of my remarks rather than the literal translation and, as the engineers would say, she raised the "dams" to the nth power.

But there are just a few things that I want to call attention to.

For some 14 years the Soil Conservation Service is trying to struggle along without me now-I was connected with that organization, and for 12 years I was State conservationist in Virginia. We are trying to save our agricultural lands. That was the purpose of that organization: to save.

Some people realize that we are getting short of agricultural land in this country. They don't seem to realize that the full dire effects are going to be in the future on the country if we keep on destroying our agricultural lands.

Now, the James River overflows sometimes. It has flooded sometimes. Did you ever stop and think of the abundant wealth, the abundant crops, that the James River bottom lands have produced? The new wealth?

This country is richer because of that wealth produced by the James River bottom lands. And we don't know how many hundred years the Indians raised corn and beans and squashes on those bottom lands.

We know that they produced enough to save the lives of the Jamestown colony when John Smith was there.

Well, those creek and river bottom lands are the only agricultural lands we have that are permanent. They can be farmed indefinitely. That occasional overflow keeps up the fertility. You don't have to be buying fertilizers in sacks continually for creek and river bottom lands.

There are lands similar to that in the Orient that are known to have been farmed for 4,000 years. You can't do that with the hill land of our State and country.

What I object to in this program of big dam building, of course, is that they don't seem to take into consideration at all the agricultural industry or agricultural interests. They have been ignored practically, here this afternoon, as a subject for discussion. And that is fairly vital and important to the country, as anyone will realize if he goes back to the grass roots of things.

Then the planners of these dams seem to think that flood control means to flood the land permanently. That takes it all out of commission. It renders it useless. It renders it valueless. And nobody is going to worry about it, so that is flood control. It is flood control with a vengeance.

I don't like to see these thousands of acres of agricultural land permanently put under water.

If I could only believe that all of the statements here were true, that this one dam would do all the things that are claimed for it, I would probably join with them and boost for the dam. But I can't believe that, when I find they took 24 dams on the Tennessee to accomplish what they say here is going to be accomplished with this one Gathright Dam.

Senator MALONE. How many acres of land would be flooded or put out of commission by the project, as intended by the original authorization?

Mr. CARRIER. Mr. Moomaw has that.

Mr. MOOMAW. The maximum area that would be covered, sir, is 4,600 acres, of which all is mountain land, or presently wooded land except about 1,500 acres of cleared land.

Senator MALONE. Fifteen hundred acres of agricultural land?

Mr. MOOMAW. Yes. And of that 1,500, a very considerable amount is very excellent, rich river-bottom land. We concede that the dam would take that area out of operation.

However, it is not being used extensively for agricultural. It is largely a very wonderful game preserve.

Mr. CARRIER. That is potentially the richest agricultural land we have.

And

And not only that, but I want you gentlemen to remember that there is a lot of grazing land up in that part of the State, in the steep hill land. But you have to feed the animals during the winter. the only place that can produce that forage economically is the creekand river-bottom land.

So when you take 1 acre of bottom land, put it out of production, you are rendering useless somewhere from 5 to 10 acres of range land that could be grazed in the summertime.

Well, so much for that.

The next thing that I can't understand is spending so much money on these dams when their usefulness is of such short duration.

I don't and I can't understand these formulas. They can quote something they have worked out showing that these dams will never silt up. But I can't go by a drawing board chart, and I don't believe the rivers follow that. In fact, it has been my experience that these rivers are rather unpredictable and are not versed in higher mathematics, at any rate.

Let me give you just a few instances of what I mean:

The Schoolfield Dam was completed in 1904. At the time it was completed, there was a pond in back of it of 550 acres which had an average depth of 17 feet. A study was made of that dam in about 1935, and they found an island in it of 450 acres, with trees over a foot in diameter growing on that island.

Here are some pictures of it. It silted to the top in less than 10

years.

Now, get that. As soon as they get 80 percent full of silt, they are useless for storage purposes, for storing water for times of plenty or times of drought. That silted up in 10 years.

The Emporia Dam on the Meherrin River is 37 feet in depth out there 300 feet from the dam, and it silted up at the rate of a foot a year. Now, the New River is more like Jackson than these two rivers I mentioned. There are four dams on the New River. There is the Claytor down at Radford, and the Buck, and the Byllesby, and the Washington Mills.

Washington Mills silted up in 18 years. Byllesby is now over 80 percent filled. Buck is next, and then goodbye Clayton. The New River runs pretty comparatively. Their water comes out of the mountain country around there, but it carries a lot of silt with it.

Last year I took several trips around the TVA Dam to see what I could find. They are filling-well, here is a forestry sign I found on one of them, on the Ocoee River [indicating photograph]. It says:

Cherokee National Forest, silt from erosion: The large mud flat in the lake is the result of erosion. Storage capacity of this lake, whose construction cost millions of dollars, has been greatly reduced by silt swept down by the rains.

Well, sure enough, there are mud flats out there. Here are pictures of them; vegetation growing above the lake, and those ponds around the perimeter of the TVA are filling up very fast. They have only been in operation now 6 to 8 or 10 years. So that is what you have got to look forward to when you build one of these dams. The silt is going to come down in there, and they are going to silt up.

Gentlemen, I do not have anything further, but I want you to take those things into consideration.

And in planning appropriations for dam building, don't overlook the agricultural interests and their importance in this country. Senator MALONE. Thank you.

Do you have any questions, Senator?
Senator ROBERTSON. No questions.

Mr. LOTH. Senator, may I ask one question, and make an observation?

Senator MALONE. Surely.

Mr. LoTH. It is my understanding that, of course, the bill in question refers only to the Gathright Dam. The question I would like to