ALBENI FALLS PROJECT, IDAHO The CHAIRMAN. Now we have with us Mr. White, a Member of Congress from the State of Idaho, who was here all day today and yesterday, and who desires to make a statement in connection with the construction of the Albenai Falls Dam in Idaho. At an estimated cost of what, Colonel Gee? Colonel GEE. $31,000,000, sir. The CHAIRMAN. That is the one Mr. White wants to testify about. We will now hear from Hon. Compton I. White, a Representative from the State of Idaho. STATEMENT OF HON. COMPTON I. WHITE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF IDAHO Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, I am Compton I. White, Representative of the First Congressional District of Idaho. I was for 10 years chairman of the Irrigation and Reclamation Committee. The CHAIRMAN. You are representing what district? Mr. WHITE. I represent the First District of Idaho. I have lived at the town of Clarks on the Clarks Fork of the Columbia River since the 30th day of July 1890. I came there when I was 13 years old, from Mississippi by way of Iowa. The CHAIRMAN. Will you indicate the lake on there? Mr. WHITE. This is a map of the Clark Fork River and Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River. I want to state that I did not come before this committee to make a record. I did not come for the purpose of the record. I came before the committee to bring to them the facts concerning this Albenai Falls project, its effect on Idaho, and the protection of the people along the Clark Fork River, around Pend Oreille, down the Pend Oreille River almost to the Washington line. This is the Washington line [indicating], and this edge of the map represents the Montana line. It is about 60 miles across the State, and water backed from the Albenai Falls site will be backed practically across the north end of the State of Idaho. The CHAIRMAN. You are familiar with the report of the Corps of Engineers on which the recommendation has been made? Mr. WHITE. I am. Mr. CHAIRMAN. And are you for or against the project? Mr. WHITE. I am familiar with the report, but I am more familiar with the physical and flood conditions in this area. And I wish the chairman would let me tell the committee something about it. The CHAIRMAN. You can take all the time you want, and I am going to stay with you. What I want, though, is for you to make any explanation that you care to make. Mr. WHITE. I will start my explanation by saying this: Due to seasonal conditions and the tremendous snowfall in the higher mountains, on the drainage of the Clark Fork River, we have been subject in early years to periodical floods. We have had a dry cycle of years. For 20 years none of this country that is now proposed to be inundated has been flooded, until last year, when we had another disastrous flood. In 1911, the people of Clark Fork and Hope, and the towns that are affected along the lake and along these rivers initiated a movement and organized the Pend Oreille Drainage Association. They did not propose to drain and lower Lake Pend Oreille. They simply wanted to control the flood level so that their farms and towns would not be inundated. They employed engineers to study the physical conditions. And a great many people said loosely, "Go down to Albenai Falls and blow out those rocks and let the lake drain, and you will avoid floods." We have a very peculiar condition in Lake Pend Oreille. We would have a flood, and the river would come to a stand just above the lake at Clark Fork, but still the lake would continue to fill up and rise. And I am going to tell you a fact from my own personal observation. In the month of June in the year 1894, when we had the worst flood we ever had, I went with a gentleman hunting some horses. The country was not very well settled. But right along the bank of the river, there was a railroad tie camp, and there were some buildings there. They had been flooded about half way up. On the door there was a high water mark. The day we looked at it, it was down about an inch. The river had come to a stand, and started to fall. But down at Hope, and Sandpoint on Lake Pend Oreille, the lake rose 21 inches the same day and continued to rise for some time, and it backed up and flooded a great deal of country; indicating very clearly to everybody that there was a bottleneck in the lake and the lake was like a jug that filled up faster than it emptied. So when we employed this engineer to go down and study the cost of removing the obstruction at Albenai Falls-that is not just a falls, but it is a place where the water runs swiftly between some big rock barriers. They call it They call it a falls. It is a natural power site. So this engineer came back after conducting these examinations and reported to the people at Hope and Clark Fork and Sandpoint, and said that the difficulty was not at Albenai Falls, but it was 5 miles up the river at a rapids in main river at the mouth of Priest River; that the rapids at Priest River was a choke and a narrows and the river was dead until it reached that point, and then it ran fast. And he said it did not make any difference what happened at Albenai Falls; we would still get our floods and the lake would continue to back up. It was clearly demonstrated in every flood period that the narrows and rapids at Priest River retarded the outflow from the lake. Then the Army engineers came in with a plan to put a dam at Albenai Falls. Let me remind the committee that this will not irrigate a foot of land. It is not for navigation. There is no navigation below that point. It will not do a thing but add some power and maybe firm up some power at the down-river plants. That is all that will be accomplished at Albenai Falls. The reason I am before your committee at this time is to ask this committee, in authorizing these project on the Clark Fork of the Columbia River, to do it in an orderly way, to give us orderly development of the Clark Fork River, and the Columbia and its tributaries. We are spending money in a big way up in the headwaters of this river at a place called Hungry Horse, for flood control, to hold the water back. What they would do to us down there at this Albenai Falls would simply fill up the lake, so that when the flood waters come in, in the spring, as they did last year, and as they are doing this year, the lake would be full of water and the flood pouring in would go that much higher and inundate the farms and town in the valleys and around the lake. They tell us they would open the gate down there at the dam and let the water out, to control the flood levels of the lake and rivers. That is impossible. It cannot be done. I am going to show you why, and the engineers' report will show you why. Here is a chart prepared by the Army engineers. You will notice that the level of Lake Pend Oreille extends right down to the mouth of the Priest River. From that point there is a fall, if you read this Army chart, of 17 feet, down to the axis of the Albenai Dam. Now, what good will it do to open gates down at the Albenai Dam if you have got your channel narrowed and choked up and backing up, with dead water back here, backing up and piling up and inundating the lands around those towns, along the Clark Fork River, Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River. And that alluvial soil up in the Clark Fork Valley must be considered. What is the good of opening the gates, if that is not the point of the bottleneck? You can open the gates at Grand Coulee or anywhere else downstream; it will not help us any. And the purpose of my coming before this committee and representing the people of all those towns and all that area along the Clark Fork Valley, around the Pend Oreille Lake and down the Pend Oreille River is to ask this committee to see to it that the water resources of the Clark Fork River are developed in an orderly fashion, and that we do the thing that is proposed by this committee and by the Congress and provide flood protection. We have, if we develop the river in an orderly way a series of dams and water storage projects. The Hungry Horse project is being built now. From there on down the river, there is a Glacier View, Paradise Dam, the Noxon Rapids and Cabinet Gorge. Cabinet Gorge has been investigated by the Bureau of Reclamation, was authorized by Congress, and it is a natural place for a dam. It will make plenty of power. It seems to be overlooked by the Army engineers. Then we have Albenai Falls, and downstream we have Metaline Falls. We have a choice of seven projects, one is being built at Hungry Horse, and all these splendid natural potential waterpower sites and storage places that will store the water and provide flood control along the river, to protect our lands and not ruin them. I will have to explain this to you. You have heard the other side. The other side has been financed and sent in here by the power interests, and I do not think there is hardly any exception. They are high pressuring and low pressuring and exerting every other kind of pressure. Let me tell you why. There is a local power company which supplies the area, in eastern Washington and northern Idaho. I am one of the customers, because I run a little mine out there, and I pay about a cent and a quarter a kilowatt for my industrial power, when you add the demand charges. These power companies have a network of transmission lines built up over the years, supplying the towns, mines, lumber mills in all the vast area of what we call the inland empire, that wonderful manufacturing and farming area around the city of Spokane, which we call the capital of the inland empire. Their power lines bringing power into Idaho come directly over the Albenai Falls project. Naturally, it will be to their advantage to have Albenai Falls built first. We get power for industrial use further up the river, at Clark Fork, and in the towns around the lake, over the company's high-power transmission lines in an arrangement whereby the Washington Power Co. delivers the power from Spokane to its transformer station at the town of Newport right near the Albenai Falls dam site. The Mountain States Power Co. buys the power from them here and carries it around the lake to the town of Sandpoint and on up to Clark Fork-power which it has obtained from the Washington Water Power Co., which is an Electric Bond and Share subsidiary. Now, with their big transformer station at Newport, they can buy Albenai Falls power from the Bonneville Power Administration for 212 mills at the bus-bar, and retail it to light consumers at current rates, and if you buy up to $3 worth, you get in on a 3-cent rate. If you run a mine, as I do, at Clark Fork, you pay a cent and a quarter. Anybody can see with half an eye why they are moving heaven and earth and sending their paid representatives before this committee to rush through this Albenai Falls project and flood the people of north Idaho out. What do they care about all this farming country and these towns when they have these big profits in sight? Let me tell you something, gentlemen. I came there in 1890. That country was largely wooded. The settlers moved in there as we did, and they had to clear away the brush and timber and blast the stumps to clear the land. There was timber there. We could not sell any timber at that time in the early years. There was no market. The timber, mostly burned, had to be felled and logged and piled up. The stumps had to be cleared. That area on the map to be flooded that you see there represents the work of a generation of people. Now let me read you the list of towns in there. I will show you on the map where these towns are. There is Clark Fork, Denton, Hope, Oden, Pack River, Kootenai, Sandpoint, Dover, Wrenco, Morton, Laclede, Sawyer, Thama, Priest River. The CHAIRMAN. Pardon me right there, if you do not mind being interrupted. Mr. WHITE. I do not. The CHAIRMAN. The testimony the other day with respect to that project, in order to refresh the memory of the committee, showed that if there was any water backed up there, it would be protected by levees, as I recall. Mr. WHITE. You could not levee that country. The CHAIRMAN. Pardon me. I do not want to interrupt you. But there would be a levee at Sandpoint. I think that is the place. Is it not the place, Colonel ? Colonel GEE. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. And that would be the only levee necessary. Do you agree with that statement? Mr. WHITE. Yes, because they would just flood and abandon the rest of it, as it is impossible to hold water in that gravelly subsoil with a levee. Let me tell you. I was born behind a levee down in Louisiana. |