bottleneck, a barrier somewhere downstream that retarded the flow of the water, and that the water did not get out as fast as it flowed in. So the settlers assumed that the trouble was at Albeni Falls.

We hired an engineeer, or the association did. He made a reconnaisance survey of the whole proposition, and came back and reported that Albeni Falls was not the obstruction causing the floods. The obstruction that was holding the water back in the lake was 5 miles. upstream at a rapids near the town of Priest River. Since then our efforts have been directed to having the rapids removed so, knowing this, when we had a flood last year I took the occasion to have some pictures made of the swift water at the rapids.

Our neighbors hired a movie photographer to go down to this bottleneck at Priest River where this choke was and where the river flowed out so fast that the piling in the river oscilliated in the fast water and I can exhibit this film showing definitely that there is very much of a barrier at Priest River in the form of that narrows and rapids.

We come before the Congress and this committee to ask them, until some provision is made to remove that barrier, that they defer action on Albeni Falls and that the project be deferred, and the Jennings project, or rather Libby project, be given priority, because that project will provide flood control as well as power and will be a logical and orderly development of the Kootenai River while on the Clark Fork River we are doing an illogical job by attempting to build the last project of the series first. We will have a contrasting picture if we build the two dams. One will be flood control on the Kootenai River and orderly control of the river, and on the other side on the Clark Fork River we will back the water up and destroy all the productive farm land along the river and around the lake clear across the State of Idaho, because Albeni Falls is right on the line at Newport, Wash., and Cabinet Gorge at the other end is on the other side of the State, right on the line at Montana, and we will back up water and flood the valley lands clear across the State.

I am asking, in the interests of the people who have reclaimed the land and built that country, that they be given flood protection. After all. the whole program of this committee and the Congress, on the Mississippi and on all these rivers, has been to provide flood protection. That is the main objective of our Government.

The Army engineers, to my mind, have overlooked the main probJem in this Albeni Falls program, the removal of the barrier at Priest River. There is a very definite reason why the local power interests are moving heaven and earth to have Albeni Falls built first. Our State officials way down in Boise know little about the conditions way up in the Panhandle. The power interests have gone to all the people that they can influence to come out for the immediate construction of Alben Falls. Why? It is very simple. The local power company has a great power-distributing system furnishing power to northern Idaho and Washington and they have a line right up to the Albeni Falls site and a transformer station at Newport, which is less than a mile away. Naturally, if they can have this project built and buy this power as they are doing now at 211⁄2 mills per kilowatt-hour or a quarter cent, if you please, they can retail it out to the industry at 14 cents. Their power rates are of record.

I made a very comprehensive statement before the House committee which appears on page 1037, and I have even put in a power bill to show you that they make a cent profit. The Government will go in and make all this investment to build the dam, produce the power, and deliver it to the bus bar, and the power company that is pushing this project will get it for 214 mills per kilowatt-hour as they are doing from Bonneville now-24 mills-and retail it out at 114 cents, mak ing a cent profit.

Is it any wonder that they are moving heaven and earth to put this thing over, and make a big profit, while Congress is induced to abandon the flood-control program on the Clark Fork River and on Lake Pend Oreille?

I do not think this committee is willing to reverse the flood-control policy of our Government. I have here the House copy of H. R. 5472, and on page 24 I am going to submit to the committee for their use a draft of an amendment. The amendment reads:

On page 24, line 4, after the words "Columbia River Basin", strike out lines from 5 to 9, inclusive, and insert: "The project for multiple purposes on the Kootenai River near Jennings, Mont., is hereby authorized substantially in accordance with the recommendations of the Chief of Engineers in Senate Document No. 9, Eighty-first Congress, first session, at an estimated cost of $239000,000."

I submit that, Mr. Chairman, to the members of this committee as an amendment, and the people that will be affected in Idaho are certainly in favor of this amendment, and it was stated very aptly by our Senator from Idaho that there would be only minor flood control, and there would be no irrigation and navigation. All it will do is produce some power that would be utilized by the local power company while the resulting floods will ruin the lands and destroy the homes and towns around Lake Pend Oreille, along the Clark Fork River and along the Pend Oreille River.

I ask that the committee defer the approval of this project until the Army comes in with some constructive plan to control the floods by removing the barrier at Priest River. Their plans show that there is a fall of 10 feet in 7 miles between the Priest River and Albeni Falls. They tell us with all the assurance in the world that the dam at Albeni Falls will control the floods. It will not control the floods at all. It will merely cover up this rapids. The barrier will still be there and when this water piles in on us with the melting snows year after year, and backs up the lake, what can they do, open the flood gates and what good will that do? The water will just run a little faster between the rapids and the dam.

They will stand by helpless and impotent and see all this land flooded. I ask that they take the Priest River rapids into consideration. I have shown that there are low alluvial banks on both sides. They will not have to dredge the river at all. All they will have to do is to go out there and excavate and take away the alluvial soil on both sides. widen the high-water outlet just as they did down at New Orleans with these bypasses. It would not be a bypass, but it will just wider. the channel, let the water out, and make a flood-control project well as a commercial-power project out of the thing.

Senator SPARKMAN. Let me ask you this question, Mr. White: It this committee should not be willing to include Libby Dam-it wa

not included in the House bill-would you recommend even in that case that Albeni Falls be omitted?

Mr. WHITE. I would omit the Albeni Falls project until certain provisions are made. Let us develop the water resources of the Clark Fork River in an orderly way. We have already started with a big investment in Hungry Horse for flood control. Let us go on down and put in a series of flood-control dams and power and irrigation dams, and not build the tail end of the thing first and wreck all this north Idaho country.

Senator SPARKMAN. Do I understand that Senator Miller took approximately the same attitude?

Mr. WHITE. Senator Miller-of course, the Governor and a lot of them were committed before they knew very much about it; and in this hearing, there seemed to be a policy here that whatever was heard over at the House side would be accepted by this committee.

Well, I want to call your attention to my testimony on page 170 that went into that in great detail and furnished a great number of communications from the people that will be affected in north Idaho protesting the project in its present form.

We have so many constructive projects that will really be multiplepurpose projects that I do not think we ought to step ahead and wreck north Idaho because we can make some quick cheap power and profits. for the local power company. We can do a better job just as easily and better and finer at Libby.

Senator MAGNUSON. You agree with all of the report with the exception of the Albeni Falls?

Mr. WHITE. I agree with the rest of the report, but I think the Army engineers overlooked something. They didn't take into consideration the high-water feature and they cannot know what we know by watching the floods one year after another. In 1894 it tied up the railroad; everything was tied up for 20 days. That is the record flood in 1894, and there was not a wheel turned. There was not a road opened. We do not want to put in something that will make that condition permanent.

Mr. Chairman, everything I have said here I think will be borne out by the record. I think I have been a little on the conservative side, but I do know from personal observation and personal experience that there is a barrier at Priest River that causes the floods around the lake and on the river-and I have got the pictures. I can come before this committee with that movie. The Army engineers were very good to us over on the House side, and loaned us their facilities to show the film, which demonstrated the barrier and the speed of the ngh water. It is all in the hearing of the House committee and we know that all that country will suffer irreparable loss, and it is so shown in the maps submitted to you. And this plan just the reverse of the flood-control policy of the Corps of Engineers and our Government.

Senator SPARKMAN. Thank you very much, Congressman White. Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, I submit for the record the proposed amendment.

Senator SPAUKMAN. The proposed amendment will be printed in the record. Thank you very much.

(The proposed amendment is as follows:)

COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN

The project for multiple-purposes on the Kootenai River near Jennings, Montana, is hereby authorized substantially in accordance with the recommenda tions of the Chief of Engineers in Senate Document Numbered 9, Eighty first Congress, first session, at an estimated cost of $239,000,000.

STATEMENT OF ROGER McWHORTER, MEMBER, INTERNATIONAL

JOINT COMMISSION

Senator SPARKMAN. Now, Mr. Roger McWhorter, chief power engi neer of the Federal Power Commission and a member of the International Joint Commission and best of all, a constituent of mine. We are glad to have you with us.

Mr. McWHORTER. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, I hardly expected to be here today, but I am very happy to be here, in my capacity as a member of the International Joint Commission, because one of the most important streams in the Columbia Basin is the Kootenai River which rises in British Columbia, flows southerly into the State of Montana, thence westerly into Idalio, thence northerly into Kootenai Lake, thence westerly to its confluence with the Columbia River.

On the Kootenai River we find the Libby Dam site which offers possibilities as one of the finest, most attractive multiple-purpose water-control projects.

I agree with Senator Morse's remarks about considering the water control problems of the Pacific Northwest primarily as a national problem and secondarily as a regional problem. I would go even further and say "considered as a national problem" and stop right there, just as I would in the case of the Tennessee Valley region, the St. Lawrence region, the Colorado River region, and the Columbia Basin region.

Mr. Chairman, as I have, I believe, said, the Kootenai River has very important international aspects. The Libby Reservoir would extend some 25 or 30 miles into Canada, and, in any event, before that project can be constructed, it must come before the International Joint Commission and be cleared by that Commission. It is all the more impor tant, therefore, that it be authorized as soon as possible.

I say that particularly in view of the merits of this project. It has merit for flood control, power development, navigation, and irrigation. all of which would produce benefits, but its principal benefits would come from flood control and power.

This project would make available about 414 million acre-feet of controlled storage, of which 4,000,000 acre-feet would be effective in controlling the largest floods that might occur in the Columbia River Basin.

Those benefits would extend on down to the lower Columbia River where three-fourths of all the flood damage in the Columbia Basin occurs, and together with the other reservoirs would provide a total of in excess of the 21,000,000 acre-feet needed to control the floods or the lower river, would reduce the flow down on that section of the river to about 800,000 cubic feet per second, which is the ceiling flow for a no-damage stage considered along with the local flood-protection work, levees, on that section of the river. As to its power value, it

would not only make available a very large block of power at the Libby Dam, but the water would course on down the Kootenai River through the five plants of the West Kootenai Power & Light Co. in Canada and then down the Columbia River through all of the plants existing, and prospective, on the Columbia River between the international boundary and the sea.

The main control plan of the Army engineers as coordinated with the Bureau of Reclamation's plan includes the existing projects, Bonneville and Grand Coulee and the authorized projects, of which the McNary Dam now under construction and the authorized project known as Chief Joseph, next below Grand Coulee, and two projects on tributaries, namely this Libby Dam project and the project to which Congressman White referred.

I join in the views expressed by the Senators and Congressman White that this plan should be adopted by Congress and these projects of high priority should be started. Of course, all the projects in that plan cannot be started at once. They must be taken up in order, and quite naturally the better projects should be started first.

Therefore, it would be in order that the Libby project be commenced just as soon as possible, but the point of immediate importance is that it be authorized by the Congress so that it may be cleared through the International Joint Commission and the commission can take account of the benefits and damages in both countries and bring about a settlement that will be fair and equitable to both countries, because until that is done the negotiations might be a stumbling block in the way of this project.

It is not my understanding that the coordinated plan of the Army engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation is as yet officially before Congress, but it is highly desirable that it be here just as soon as possible, and I here express the hope that something may be done to expedite it and get it before Congress.

In any event, Mr. Chairman, I would be very much disappointed if the committee does not get the Libby project included in the contemplated omnibus bill because that is the very kind of project that should be constructed by the United States.

There is no possibility of the public ever losing a dollar in constructing a project of that kind. I would say that that project will be worth twice as much as it would cost the Government.

I noticed that the benefits-cost ratio as set up is 1.75 to 1, but if Senator Cain's statement is correct, that referred to power only. This Libby project is worth every dollar it will cost on the basis of its power values only, let alone the very spectacular flood-control values it offers.

I have not as yet mentioned the flood control benefits other than on the lower Columbia River where this project would be of great value, but also it would completely eliminate the flood problem in the Kootenai Valley below the dam.

This region that Congressman White spoke of in the delta of the Kootenai River embraces a large area of land which I believe is as fertile as any land on the North American Continent. It compares with the land and the alluvial value of the Tennessee River where I used to grow a hundred bushels of corn to the acre, and this land out

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