The Warrior River is formed by the confluence of the Locust and Mulberry Forks about 20 miles west of Birmingham, Ala., and flows southwestwardly 178 miles, entering the Tombigbee River just above Demopolis. The Tombigbee River is formed by the east and west forks in northeastern Mississippi near Amory, Miss., and flows southeasterwardly through eastern Mississippi and western Alabama to its confluence with the Alabama River to form the Mobile River, 45 miles upstream from Mobile, Ala. The Mobile River flows southward to Mobile, where it enters Mobile Bay, an arm of the Gulf of Mexico 8 miles wide and 30 miles long. From its source at the forks to its mouth at the head of Mobile River, the Tombigbee River is about 384 miles long.

The Tennessee River is formed by the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers near Knoxville, Tenn., and flows_southwestward to a point on the Alabama State line near the Georgia boundary. From there it crosses into Alabama and flows westward across the northern part of the State to the intersection of the Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee boundaries; then it turns northward across Tennessee and Kentucky and empties into the Ohio River at Paducah, Ky. The length of the main stream is 652 miles.

The existing project on the Warrior-Tombigbee Waterway provides for a year-round channel 9 feet deep and 200 feet wide to be secured by the construction of a series of locks and dams, 15 in number. The head of navigation is at Port Birmingham, Ala.

I hope you will take time to look at the first picture in that book [indicating] because it gives an idea how tremendous the size of that lock is, and that brings out more clearly the importance of the large lock in contrast to the small lock. That is the lock on the Tennessee now. Those locks are built to accommodate this type of tow [indicating].

Mr. RANKIN. That is the same size and type of lock used on the Ohio River.

Colonel FERINGA. Those are the same type standard locks, Mr. Rankin.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has provided a comprehensive development for navigation, power, and flood control. The Pickwick and Kentucky Dams each have locks 110 by 600 by 13 feet. The dams provide a year-round 9-foot navigation channel with a standard 2-foot overdraft at Knoxville.

The port of Mobile is connected with the Gulf of Mexico by a dredged channel 32 feet and about 30 miles long through Mobile River and Mobile Bay. The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, 12 feet deep, crosses Mobile Bay.

I might add, Mr. Rankin, that the locks are built so that the full economy of water transportation can be realized without holding up a tow for double locking.

Mr. PETERSON of Georgia. How far up the Tennessee Valley can you conduct barge tows?

Colonel FERINGA. Up to Knoxville, although the upper locks are not the same size as those proposed in this project; there are only two locks on the Tennessee that are of the large size; that is, the Pickwick and the Kentucky Dams which I mentioned-that is, the dams below the confluence.

Mr. PETERSON of Georgia. But you do have 9 feet of water all the way up?

Colonel FERINGA. Yes, sir; and it is being used. There was an article in the Engineering News Record which mentioned the great traffic on the Tennessee. It appears that the traffic has increased steadily.

Mr. PETERSON of Georgia. Is the depth the same?

Colonel FERINGA. It is nearly all pools created by the dams so that it is really a tremendous body of lakes, one after the other.

Mr. DONDERO. The prior report, Colonel Feringa, did not include facilities to take barge tows as large as these shown on the photograph. Colonel FERINGA. You are correct, sir.

Mr. DONDERO. And that made it necessary for the engineers to include other items to justify this proposal?

Colonel FERINGA. That is a difficult question. The other report did not propose this size lock, and therefore the cost was less. We show in this report that without using these more or less imponderables which you have mentioned heretofore, by using only the dollars and cents which we can actually show are justified, we come out with an economic ratio without using the item for recreation and without using the item for increased land value. What we show in this report is what you would get on a conservative basis.

Mr. DONDERO. But you could not have justified some of the proposals heretofore made without including those intangible items that we have been discussing here this morning?

Colonel FERINGA. It is a deep question, Mr. Dondero. General Wheeler was resident member of the Board at that time and as he stated, the Board passed that other report without equivocation and unanimously. General Schley, for whom I have great admiration, was ultraconservative in his way of looking at things and he made his own finding.

Mr. RANKIN. The other one was more abundantly justified. It was brought up, I think, at the Senate hearing that these changes were made in the locks so that the locks would be standard and could take all the barges.

Mr. DONDERO. The point I was emphasizing, and perhaps you can recall my question, was that by using the larger tow you can save a great deal.

Colonel FERINGA. That is right, Mr. Dondero.

Mr. DONDERO. I take it you cannot show a ratio of return better than the money invested.

Colonel FERINGA. I believe that if we go into greater detail we could have shown an economic ratio without showing those intangibles. It is frequently in our reports that when we come to a ratio which is favorable we consider it well enough and say, "Let us not go further." I was not in on the first Tennessee-Tombigbee report. I was in the Jacksonville, Fla., district, as I recall, at that time; but I can say from this present report definitely that we can evaluate every dollar that we put in as of economic benefit, and we show in our report at great length those facts. The Board in this case, as required by the authorizing resolution, has worked up the economic data; therefore we go to greater lengths to show the economic data than we would in a report where we would spend more time on engineering construction. Mr. DONDERO. The Army engineers made an unusual effort to find some items to justify this project in the former report and you went far afield; and, as General Wheeler said, you did what you had never done before in any project before Congress.

Colonel FERINGA. That is right.

Mr. DONDERO. Now you have a report here where you have eliminated those most controversial items.

Colonel FERINGA. That is right.

Mr. DONDERO. Which left you wide open to attack, and that was my reason for opposing it.

Colonel FERINGA. Yes, sir.

Mr. RANKIN. I am bound to confess that the weakest part of the other report was the size of these locks, because it was brought out by these barge people that many of the barges they used on the Ohio River and the upper Mississippi and Missouri River and also the Illinois River, could not pass through these locks without being greatly delayed, and as a result the size of the locks was increased to 110 by 600 feet; and with that increase in size, any barge that uses the Ohio, the Mississippi, or the Illinois River locks should pass through those locks with proper expedition.

Colonel FERINGA. That is right, sir; and may I point out also that the depth of the lock is 13 feet, although we recommend presently that the channel between these locks be only to a depth of 9 feet. We put in the depth of 13 feet in the locks so that we were on the outside and that there could be no question but that we had presented it to you in the most conservative manner.

Mr. RANKIN. And I want to say at this time that I am in entire agreement that this delay has been of help, because it will enable us to get locks of the proper size, which is far better than to have had the smaller locks and then have had to go to the expense to change them later. It is much easier to build them the proper size at the start than to try to expand them after they have been put in.

Colonel FERINGA. I have heard you mention automobiles, Mr. Rankin, and I have a photograph here showing a tow of automobiles being carried on barges on the Ohio River, which also I would like to make a part of the record for the committee [indicating].

Mr. PETERSON. of Georgia Without objection it may be received and made a part of the record.

(The photograph referred to is on file with the committee.)

Colonel FERINGA. May I add again, Mr. Chairman, that these photographs were prepared at the request of Mr. Rankin, and the figures that were placed on them were placed thereon at the request of Mr. Rankin.

I hate to add to General Wheeler's testimony, because he is, in my opinion, the most outstanding engineer I know and I know many; but I want to substantiate what he says, that this is similar, for instance, to the Cape Cod Canal or the C. & D. Canal, where two existing waterways had been connected; and I previously pointed out to this committee, based upon graphs presented that we estimated for those waterways a certain amount of tonnage and that tonnage was exceeded many times over; and there, again, they were justified in a superabundance of tonnage based upon the tonnage that we presented to the committee.

Mr. RANKIN. What is the C. & D.?

Colonel FERINGA. That is the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.

Mr. DONDERO. Did you make a study of the railroad rates of lines that run parallel to this river?

Colonel FERINGA. We did, sir.

Mr. DONDERO. How did it compare with the water rates?

Colonel FERINGA. About 4 or 5 years ago there was instituted by Congress a committee which was called the Board of Investigation and Research. That was a public Board and, therefore, its recommendations were made available to the other governmental agencies. That Board, although it had no connection with the Board for Rivers and Harbors and the Corps of Engineers or any other agency of the Corps of Engineers, made a study of the tonnage carried by the railroads and we were given access to those figures; and based on those figures we examined the tonnage and the type of materials that were carried by the railroads. We were not satisfied with only that, but we also went to the large shippers.

After that we went into them again, scratched out items, and the result we now present to you is the result of that thoroughgoing study. That is all brought out on page 27 of this report (H. Doc. No. 486).

The proposed Tombigbee-Tennessee waterway, properly considered as a connecting channel between the Gulf-Intracoastal Waterway on the south and the Mississippi River system on the north.

Traffic in 1944 on the existing weterways to be connected by the proposed improvement is as follows:

On the Gulf-Intracoastal, 24,485,487 tons, with a total of 5,805,112,000 ton-miles.

The Mississippi River system, 91,377,342 tons for a total of 19,003,402,000 ton-miles.

The Warrior-Tombigbee, 1,440,432 tons for a total of 240,431,000 ton-miles.

The Tombigbee (above Demopolis), 7,433 tons for a total of 104,000 ton-miles.

The Tennessee River carried 2,482,000 tons for a total of 162,371,000 ton-miles.

I would like to pause here a minute, Mr. Chairman, and point out that the Warrior-Tombigbee system is one of the very few systems that showed a decrease in traffic during the war. We have analyzed that stream and the basis of that falling off is due to the type of traffic that largely went into the port of Mobile. Before the war a considerable tonnage was shipped from Mobile through the Panama Canal and to the West Coast of the United States and also in the reverse direction but due to the war that tonnage had been practically stopped and consequently the amount of traffic on that system decreased. Now that tonnage will again increase, without doubt. I think that is the sole exception to the upward trend of all other waterways.

The proposed waterway will be a connecting link between two waterway systems already improved and carrying substantial traffic. In a broad sense, therefore, the tributary area includes the entire Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri, and upper Mississippi Valleys, to the north, and to the south the lower Mississippi as far south as Baton Rouge and the area adjacent to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

A steady increase in the population of the States immediately adjacent to the proposed waterway has been noticed since 1900. During the latest census period population growth in the area was more rapid than for the United States as a whole.

On page 27 of the report it shows how thorough the estimates are. The region tributary to the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers contain thousands of acres of fertile agricultural lands with a wide variety in types of soil. The principal crops in the States of Alabama, Missis

sippi, and Tennessee are cotton, corn, sweet potatoes, peanuts, vege tables, and hay. Dairying is becoming increasingly important in northeast Mississippi and in parts of Alabama, and I think cattle raising has recently become very important.

Mr. RANKIN. In your statement a moment ago on the rivers embraced in this system you left out the Illinois River. That also is included.

Colonel FERINGA. That should be included. If I left it out it was due to an oversight.

Mr. RANKIN. It goes into the Great Lakes.

Colonel FERINGA. Yes; it goes into the Great Lakes, and that is a project which I explained to this committee some time ago. You are completely right, Mr. Rankin.

The more important mineral resources of the area are located in the Tennessee River Valley. Chief among these deposits are coal, iron ore, limestone, phosphate rock, marble, and other building stone, copper ore, zinc ore, ceramic clays, asphaltic limestone, bauxite, barite, slate, sand, and gravel. Within or near the basin of the Tombigbee River the mineral resources include sand, gravel, limestone, asphalt rock, fuller's earth, bentonite, bauxite, iron ore (brown), and clay. Most of the minerals found in the Tombigbee and Tennessee Valleys have been worked in the past. Some of these, especially in the Tennessee Valley, have been mined successfully.

I was interested, Mr. Chairman, to see what asphaltic limestone was. I have not done any work with it and so I was curious to find out what it was, and I find that it is a limestone that is impregnated with small amounts of asphalt. I have a sample here which I want to present to the committee [indicating].

Mr. RANKIN. We use it to build roads.

Colonel FERINGA. You can crush it and when you use it the asphalt is right there and it stands up.

Mr. RANKIN. That material is available right in the corner of my district. They call it Kentucky asphalt.

Colonel FERINGA. As you can see, that asphaltic limestone should be a very important product in the building of roads.

The principal mineral production of Alabama, as listed by the Bureau of Mines, is coal, iron ore, cement, and clay products; those of Mississippi, natural gas, sand and gravel, and clay; and in Tennessee, coal, cement, stone, and zinc.

Crude oil has been discovered in Mississippi and Alabama fields so recently that it is not now possible to predict future developments in primary oil production in the area adjoining the waterway. Latest estimated reserves, according to the American Petroleum Institute, are 209,011,000 barrels in Mississippi, and 317,000 barrels in Alabama. In 1944 Mississippi produced 16,337,000,000 barrels and Alabama 43,000 barrels of crude oil.

Local interests desire the construction of a waterway connecting the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers.

The growth of industry in the Mobile and Birmingham districts and the favorable prospect for much greater development were advanced to justify the need for water transportation. Other benefits claimed for the waterway were that it would shorten the distance by water from the Tennessee Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, thereby lowering transportation charges; that it would offer an alternate