Mr. WHITE. The whole river program, yes; but that takes in the Willamette and all the other tributaries and potential dam sites. The CHAIRMAN. Would you like to file this statement?

Mr. WHITE. Yes.

(The statement referred to is as follows:)

PROPOSED ALBENAI FALLS DAM AND WATER STORAGE PROJECT

To: Hon, William M. Whittington, Chairman, Committee on Public Works, House Office Building, Washington, D. C.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN WHITTINGTON: Reference is made to the proposed Albenai Falls water storage and hydroelectric project on Lake Pend Oreille, in the State of Idaho, now under consideration by the War Department, which, when approved by the Department, will be referred to the members of the Public Works Committee for consideration in presenting the proposed project to the House for congressional approval, as we are informed.

We, the committee representing the property owners in the area tributary to the Clark Fork River, Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River, respectfully call your attention to certain features and facts concerning the proposed project that is detrimental to the public welfare and that will do irreparable damage to the lands and properties of the communities in the area surrounding the lake and in the valleys through which the Clark Fork and the Pend Oreille River flow, extending practically across the north end of the State of Idaho.

The proposed water storage plan is a reversal of the long-established flood control and land-protection policy of the Congress and the Federal Government. This plan is a radical departure from the orderly development program of the water and land resources of the Clark Fork and Pend Oreille River previously initiated and now underway by the construction of the Hungry Horse water storage and hydroelectric project at the headwaters of the Clark Fork River as an initial step in the construction program comprising a series of water storage and multiple-purpose dam and reservoir projects for the utilization and conservations of the land and water resources of the Clark Fork and Pend Oreille River.

The proposed water storage project at Albenai Falls will flood large areas of valuable agricultural and timberlands adjacent to the Clark Fork River, Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River.

The proposed Albenai Falls water storage plan as submitted by the Army engineers to the property and land owners of the area is incomplete, deficient, and fails to take cognizance of and provide for the stabilization of the level of Lake Pend Oreille and the Clark Fork River above the lake and the Pend Oreille River between Lake Pend Oreille and the site of the proposed dam at Albenai Falls to prevent floods during the highwater period; in that it fails to provide for the enlargement and improvement of the outlet from Lake Pend Oreille of the narrows and shallows at what is known locally as Priest Rapids located 5 miles above the proposed dam site which now and always has constituted a bottleneck to the outflow of water from Lake Pend Oreille during the annual high water period, a flood menance that will be intensified by permanently raising the proposed water storage level of Lake Pend Oreille and the Clark Fork River.

May we respectfully point out the difference in elevation of 10 feet in the water level in the distance of 5 miles between the rapids at Priest River and the site at the proposed dam at Albenai Falls.

Of what avail will opening the floodgates during the high water period at the proposed Albenai Falls Dam 5 miles downstream from the narrows and shallows at Priest Rapids which is 10 feet higher in elevation than the floodgates in the Albenai Falls Dam when the inflow of floodwaters pouring into Lake Pend Oreille are choked back at the bottleneck at Priest Rapids after the dam is built and the flood gates are opened than they do now? Year after year the settlers farming their lands in the Clark Fork Valley and on the lands adjacent to Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River have witnessed the phenomenal Clark Fork River falling while the waters of Lake Pend Oreille and the Pend Oreille River continued to rise.

The planned spillway capacity at Albenai Falls when the outflow of the lake is retarded at the narrows and rapids 10 feet higher and 5 miles upstream is an inadequate guarantee against future floods in northern Idaho.

We respectfully invite the attention of the members of your committee to the well-known fact repeatedly demonstrated in excessive high water years that after the rise of the floodwaters of the Clark Fork River have come to a stand and start to recede that the waters of Lake Pend Oreille continue to rise and have repeatedly inundated the farm lands in the Clark Fork Valley and around Lake Pend Oreille and along the Pend Oreille River after the inflowing water from the Clark Fork River had started to fall, conclusively demonstrating that floodwaters flow into Lake Pend Oreille faster than it can flow out through the narrows and shallows at Priest River.

A casual investigation of the topography and terrain on both sides of the Pend Oreille River at Priest Rapids will disclose the feasibility of widening the river channel above the low mater mark by excavating and removing the level and low-lying river banks composed in a large measure of river silt which will give ample flowage capacity during the annual high water period to reduce the flood level of the lake and the menace of high water to the lands and comunities of the Clark Fork Valley, on lands adjacent to the lake and along the Pend Oreille River.

We submit that the settlers that have pioneered in clearing up and reclaiming farms from stump lands and building the urban communities of northern Idabo are as fully entitled to protection from floods by the application of the flood control program of our Government as the people on the lands along other rivers of the United States.

We protest the approval of the Albenai Falls Dam and water storage project by Congress until the effective control of the floodwaters of Lake Pend Oreille are made a part of the project and our homes and lands are protected from floods.

Respectfully,

A. M. DEER,
EUGENE RALPH,
COMPTON I. WHITE.

The CHAIRMAN. Who are these men who signed this with you? Mr. WHITE. They are land owners and farmers in the Clark Fork Valley, representing an organization of the land and property owners in the area that will be inundated by the proposed water storage in Lake Pend Oreille and tributary rivers. This statement was prepared when Mr. Dondero was chairman, last year, and was signed by Mr. Derr and Mr. Ralph and myself, and it is in the files here. We sent it on to this committee.

There is a little more here that I want to file, too.

The CHAIRMAN. You will have to read it, because they cannot print the newspapers.

Mr. WHITE. This is from the Sandpoint News-Bulletin, of June 10, 1948, our main county seat paper there [reading]:

Change in sentiment on Albenai Falls is noted as lake level climbs higher. Local sentiment toward erection of a dam at Albenai Falls has undergone a marked changed in the past fortnight since flood waters have inundated the area surrounding Lake Pend Oreille and along the river between here and the falls, just east of Newport.

It does not say anything about all that country up to Clark Fork. [Reading.]

Where previously local citizens had expressed approval of the dam which would hold the level of Lake Pend Oreille at 2,062.5 feet most of the year, this year's flood visitation, the greatest since the record flood of 1894, has caused many to question the wisdom of making a reservoir of the lake.

The statement heard daily about the streets of Sandpoint is "What would have happened to us this year if Albenai Falls Dam was here now. The town of Sandpoint would have been flooded by an unprecedented 24-foot flood that would have cost people their homes, life savings, not to mention millions of dollars."

The CHAIRMAN. Your statement emphasizes that the people out there feel this would not protect them from floods.

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir. As presently designed it would not. There was a million dollar loss just last year. All our main arterial roads were tied up all the way from Clark Fork around the lake for 6 weeks. Not a car or anything could get in there or across this part of Idaho. And they had a terrible time saving the railroad.

You know, these Army engineers do make mistakes. They do make miscalculations. You know where they built the town of Vanport City. It is on the same river, only a little farther down.

So we want orderly development of Clark Fork and the Columbia River. And we do not want to put in a dam that will just wreck us in north Idaho, while waiting for these other dams to be built upstream in the orderly development of the river and flood control projects. I am speaking for all those settlers that went in there 50 years ago and in later years and removed the stumps and made productive fields and farm sites. You could not have cleared that land for a hundred dollars an acre then. Now you can do it, with these cats and bulldozers for about $50. So we are asking this committee not to let them rush in because the power company happens to have a big transmission line right on the spot, that traverses the river road near the dam site. The CHAIRMAN. You mean Albenai Falls?

Mr. WHITE. Albenai Falls. Newport is where we all get our juice from the big trunk power transmission lines in there now. It will not take a mile of copper wire from the power company transformer station to tap the bus bar, and put this electric power into their whole network. Naturally, they have their side down here before you. Naturally, they go to our Governor for support. And to the people in the lower end of our State who do not know much about this situation. Our town and the Idaho Panhandle is more or less isolated from the rest of Idaho.

So I ask that this committee have care in authorizing this bill. If you give priority to the dam up there at Libby, you will not only provide the power and the flood control, but you will help the whole situation by protecting the lands in the diking districts in Boundary County.

Let us give Libby first priority. That is what I am advocating. Let us carry out this power development and flood-control program in an orderly way. Do not do it backward and wreck us, while we are waiting for flood control.

I want to tell you how much I appreciate the courtesy I have received in this hearing. The reel I am going to show you was made by Ross Hall, our commercial photographer at Sandpoint, who went to the rapids at Priest River in flood time at the request of the citizens. We have some moving pictures to show you.

The CHAIRMAN. While they are fixing that (the projector) let me ask you about this other reservoir you tell us you favor. How far is that from this reservoir?

Mr. WHITE. It is the Libby Dam on the Kootenai River at Jennings, Mont., which will do twice as much as the Albenai Falls Dam in storing water and generating power and firming power downstream at Grand Coulee and Bonneville and also provide real flood control to protect Bonners Ferry and the 13 rich leveed districts in the Kootenai Valley besides firming up the power of the five hydroelectric plants now installed on the river in Canada. That is just over the

hills, but it is another river system. You see, there are two great arms of the Columbia that come down from the Continental Divide. They come right straight across Montana and reach Idaho. There they do a peculiar thing. They both turn abruptly, squarely, and flow north into Canada.

The CHAIRMAN. They told us about that the other day.

Mr. WHITE. The Kootenai swings north into Canada. The Clark Fork rising on the Continental Divide in Montana swings north in Idaho and flows into Canada, also.

Now gentlemen, you will notice in the moving picture, the oscillations of the piling in the current there. Where the river is high they have piling there to catch the logs and hold them in during the flood stage of the river. You can hear these piling pounding in the flood 5 miles away, in the swift current that flows through the rapids at Priest River.

The CHAIRMAN. How far is it down to Spokane?

Mr. WHITE. About 50 miles.

The CHAIRMAN. Where do you live, there?

Mr. WHITE. I live right at Clark Fork.

You will see the piling swaying there, and this is in the rapids. See that piling jumping there? The water is flowing toward you. See the piling swinging? That is in the bottleneck that backs the the water up into all of that valley about us, when the river is in flood.

There is the rapids. You see it? You see how low the the bank is over there? It would not take much to widen the channel so that the floodwater could spread out and let the water out of the lake as fast as it flows in.

Mr. MCGREGOR. Is that low water or high water?

Mr. WHITE. That is high water. See all the piling swinging! The CHAIRMAN. They are dancing; they are not swinging. Mr. WHITE. Well, the current runs about 16 miles an hour. There goes a log. It is moving right along. If you had to catch it with a rowboat, you would find out.

See the narrows? Just look at that water. It is just boiling.

You can see, gentlemen, all the way across there, where we want to take that bank away to widen the channel of the river. That is right in the Priest Rapids. Here is Albenai Falls. It is not a falls; it is just swift water between rock barriers.

Mr. McGREGOR. Do you want that dredged out?

Mr. WHITE. No. Albeni Falls is where this dam would be built. By the way, I have a picture of the proposed dam taken from a newspaper.

The CHAIRMAN. We want to get through with this first.

Mr. WHITE. You see the Great Northern bridge? There is a big transmission line. You can almost see the pole. That is the reason that the power people want this dam built first regardless of the damage to the landowners. If they can get the Government to spend all the money and deliver the power to them at 22 mills, and they are selling it to the power users at a cent and a quarter, while for lighting our home we pay 4 cents, you can see how it is. There is quite a difference between 211⁄2 mills and 3 cents. No wonder you have been listening to all these paid representatives that have been sent before this committee.

The CHAIRMAN. We have not heard them as long as we heard you,

now.

Mr. WHITE. I want you gentlemen to know that your consideration is not lost on me.

I have a picture taken from a newspaper. And did you want to have the reel run again?

The CHAIRMAN. No. Have you another one you want to show? Mr. WHITE. NO. If you want to see it again, I will have it run. As I showed you on the other map, it is a 10-foot drop from the rapids at Priest River where this water runs so fast to the dam site. Mr. ANGELL. How high will the dam be?

Mr. WHITE. Enough to hold the water at 2,06211⁄2 feet.

Mr. ANGELL. It will cover up those falls?

Mr. WHITE. It will cover up a lot. But that is not where the danger is. If there comes a big thaw, a big rush of water it can go so high it will drown us all. And we think it is vital that that bottleneck, that narrows in the rapids should be widened and made a part of this project. We do not think the project should be approved until the widening of the rapids is made a part of it.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have your statement, and we are glad to have had you before us.

Mr. WHITE. And I want to thank the committee for their patient attention and for remaining here this late in the day.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further witnesses?

The committee stands adjourned until Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 4:40 p. m., the committee recessed, to reconvene at 10 a. m., Tuesday, May 31, 1949.)

(The following statements and papers were subsequently submitted:)

[From Coeur D'Alene (Idaho) Press, May 19, 1949]

ELECTRICITY USED IN 1948 BY WWP CUSTOMERS SETS ALL-TIME RECORD

A record number of Washington Water Power customers used an unprecedented amount of electricity in 1948, according to the firm's Ninety-fifth annual report being issued this week to stockholder and employees. Net income was down 11 percent compared with 1947.