THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Control of Waterways Disastrous Floods May Be Prevented and the Annual Run-off Utilized in the Nation's Interest By SENATOR F. C. NEWLANDS (Since 1907 Senator...
...And I must confess that I do not understand by what logic it is argued that, because a dam which breaks is a source of danger, a dam which does not break is not a source of safety and benefit...
...The methods used for storing the water in this soil for "dry farming" are not applicable to the humid regions, but these facts are cited to show that it can be done and that it is no new thing...
...A Word About Dams THE STATEMENT of Mr...
...And what is true of Pittsburgh and the Ohio River is also true of the Miami, the Scioto, and any other stream where similar conditions may be found...
...The stage of water at St...
...Floods and low water, with their attending loss of life and property, caving river banks and shifting channels, soil erosion, sandbars, and other impediments to navigation, are all due to one cause, namely, the too rapid run-off of rain...
...Irrigate the Arid Lands A FIFTH means is the storage of water in the arid and semi-arid regions, and its utilization for irrigation where rainfall is not sufficient...
...Nobody proposes to spend as much as that upon these forms of conservation in any one year, or in two, three or five...
...Meanwhile the apportionment of the appropriations for the work has been made by Congress, with the result that it has become the prize of scandalous political scrambles, and that the work has been done in a hapliazard, unconnected, unscientific and wasteful manner...
...The experience of other nations, no less than our own, proves that they do...
...Nobody has yet suggested such a hare-brained idea, but it appears that some debris requires to be cleared from men's minds, just as the sufferers in Ohio and Indiana must clear away a deposit of mud, before constructive work can be done...
...This notwithstanding the fact that enormous sums have been spent in deepening and widening channels and in leveeing and revetting banks...
...It is to be borne in mind that the functions of a dam constructed for the purpose of aiding river regulation and flood prevention are exactly opposite to those of a dam constructed for the purpose of impounding water for domestic use...
...This method of plowing forms no obstacle to the planting and cultivation of the crops...
...but if the investment of half of such a sum within a period of ten years would give us navigable rivers, prevent ordinary floods and mitigate extraordinary ones, stop soil erosion, increase our disappearing timber supply, prevent crop failure by drought, increase the productivity of the soil all over the humid region, and make thousands of new homes for men in the arid and semi-arid West, then I am for spending it...
...It is no wonder that thoughtful men have long realized that something is wrong and have been trying to find a remedy...
...My proposal is simply that a competent body be organized to study the questions involved and formulate plans for the co-ordinated benefit of all the interests involved, along these general lines...
...Where irrigation is being practised it has been found to aid in the prevention of floods, and there is great need for the extension of the work for this reason, as well as for other reasons...
...Cultivation, as now ordinarily practised, affords the most favorable conditions for rapid run-off and comparatively slight absorption...
...If the advocates of river improvement have hitherto been given scant consideration by Congress, there will be a different story to tell when they are reinforced by those interested in these other forms of conservation...
...In short, we propose to make this the demand of a united nation, instead of only a fraction...
...Help From Reservoirs A SECOND means of obstructing run-off is found in the proposed construction of dams for the formation of large reservoirs, at selected sites on the headwaters of streams...
...Does any sensible man believe that if these dams had been recently built by government engineers they would have failed...
...but rather against the average flood---such as occurs in 99 years out of 100---the cumulated losses from which are probably greater than even from such phenomenal floods as the recent one...
...It is easy to shock people by the startling presentation of large figures, into the belief that such proposals are impracticable...
...Again, in the semi-arid West a method of soil cultivation has been developed known as "dry farming," by which crops are now profitably grown over large areas where formerly nothing could be raised because of insufficient rainfall...
...The "Newlands Bill" SUCH in brief outline are some of the means which could be, and I believe ought to be, adopted in the solution of these great problems...
...while in the former case, the object is to keep it as nearly empty as circumstances will permit...
...I will have to leave the controversy over the correctness of their conclusions to others...
...If the water which falls from the clouds is impeded by any means, it is that much longer in reaching the river (according to the nature of the impediment...
...If the field is sloping or hilly, the plow follows the contour of the level land...
...The Matter of Cost THE COST of the works proposed would be large beyond doubt...
...Improve River Channels A THIRD means to the same end is the deep-ening, widening and straightening of river channels, the building of levees and the laying of revetments along the banks...
...and what is needed on the land to prevent soil erosion and other destruction by floods, is precisely the thing which will make the flow of rivers stable...
...Statistics show that there has been a steady increase, ever since the country's settlement by white men, in the height of the flood at New Orleans, at Memphis, at Cairo, and at every place where a record has been kept...
...W. J. McGee, in his suggestion of this method for preparing their fields...
...Disasters ought to bring men together, not to separate them...
...During the unprecedented dry weather of 1910, when the rainfall in Minnesota was less than half the normal, these reservoirs supplied more than two feet of water at St...
...These are the methods now and heretofore pursued, and there is no dispute about their propriety, always provided the work is done in a comprehensive way and under large plans, taking each river sys tem as a whole into consideration from source to mouth, and removing the apportionment of the appropriations from political control...
...IN TIMES of great disaster it is natural that men's minds should turn, as soon as everything possible has been done to save life and alleviate suffering, to the means of preventing a recurrence of similar catastrophes...
...Here, then, the believer in the conservation of timber and soil has a common interest with the advocate of river regulation and flood prevention, and they should work hand in hand...
...It is practised at many places in france and other countries, and in this country has been in use for at least seventy-five years, in Ohio, on the Miami and Erie Canal, the Ohio and Erie Canal, and elsewhere...
...Freeman Thorp, the portrait painter, has for years pursued this method upon his farm in Minnesota and demonstrated that it not only forms an absolute insurance against loss by drought, but also doubles the productiveness of the soil...
...The advocates of an enlarged policy reply this work is but a fragment of what we shall be ultimately forced to do, if we are ever to accomplish the aims of true conservation...
...M. O. Leighton, chief hydrographer of the Geological Survey, which appeared a few days ago, set the whole matter in a clear light...
...Prizes for Political Scrambles FOR YEARS river navigation has been slowly dying and, on many streams where it once flourished, is now extinct...
...We are now facing a crisis which will put to the sharpest test our capacity for efficiency in dealing with things vital to the safety and happiness of our people...
...This is called soil erosion...
...The original project contemplated the construction of a system of forty-one reservoirs, of which five are now in operation...
...There are many places on the headwaters of the headwaters of the western tributaries of the Mississippi where this can be done, to say nothing of the Pacific Coast, where the people are as much interested in the promotion of navigation and prevention of floods as in the Mississippi Valley...
...It is true that our finest forests have been destroyed to make homes for men, and that the area left available for replanting might not exert a controlling influence on the floods, even if all taken advantage of...
...They are just as much entitled to it as the dwellers along the lower Mississippi are entitled to have levees built for their protection...
...Every one who has observed how trees grow on river bottom lands will readily understand how the absorption of all the rain falling upon soil covered by forests might be beneficial to the trees, even in a humid climate...
...Thus the expansion of our country has itself been an agency of destruction...
...The means by which this is accomplished is, briefly, to plow the surface of the soil in such a way as to hold back as much as possible of the rainfall and to cause it to sink into the ground instead of running off...
...The nation is spending more than a billion dollars annually upon its running expenses...
...The results reported by the engineers from the operation of the dams in use give great encouragement for the belief that the system, when completed, will be entirely successful...
...but much can be done by planting trees wherever possible and by teaching scientific soil cultivation for the prevention of run-off...
...It is no uncommon thing, in that region, for a farmer to save the rainfall of two years and utilize it for growing one crop...
...As a believer in true conservation and one of the proponents of the policy of broadening our river improvement work to include other intimately related forms of conservation, I regret to observe an apparent disposition to take advantage of this opportunity to discredit those who favor such a policy...
...In the latter case, the object is to keep the reservoir as full as possible all the time...
...It is not against such epochal floods that the proposed enlargement of the river regulation policy is expected to bring immunity, although it is believed that it would in a measue reduce their destructiveness...
...and then, when the danger is past, to let the water escape for the increase of the flow of the river and in order that the storage capacity of the reservoir may be available when the next rainfall comes...
...By combining the uses of river regulation and of irrigation, where one dam will serve them both, the cost can be shared and larger benefits conferred...
...Stripped of the misunderstandings which surround it, this means simply that it is believed enough water can be impounded to exercise a considerable restraining influence upon floods, and at the same time to promote navigation by letting out the stored water to reinforce the flow at times of drought...
...Let us have a little common sense, even in a time of crisis, and admit that though dams which break help to create floods, yet dams which do not break help to prevent them...
...THE MEANS of preventing too rapid run-off proposed by the advocates of the enlargement of our river regulation policy are several in number, and are all such as experience has shown to be helpful to that end, as well as beneficial in themselves...
...and during the summer of 1911 they were equally effective...
...Paul...
...Let us build the kind that do not break...
...If so, it is high time it were generally understood, if we are to get anywhere with the conservation movement...
...Little need be said about the importance of irrigation in the West or of the need of providing homes for our people on the soil...
...If adopted, they will bring to the support of those who wish to improve the rivers and check the floods the aid of those who are interested in the conservation of our natural resources in timber and water, and in the preservation of the fertility of the soil and prevention of drought as well as the promotion of reclamation and home building in the West...
...Moreover, I ask, is it fair to cite the giving way of such structures as an argument against the construction of safe modern works...
...We cannot retrace our steps, and no true conservationist wishes to do so...
...The means which prevent too rapid runoff are the same means which aid navigation, prevent floods and turn water into a blessing instead of a curse...
...Since the impounding of water in this manner would create vast water-power, it is proposed that the cost of the works can be repaid, in part at least, by selling the water-power...
...The soil experts of the Department of Agriculture have known these things for years...
...He has also found that whereas the average time required to bring a crop of timber to maturity is forty years, a better crop can be matured in seventeen years by this method...
...Does it really seem reasonable that, in regions where the annual rainfall is from 25 to 40 inches, crops should often be ruined because rain does not fall at the right time...
...The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Control of Waterways Disastrous Floods May Be Prevented and the Annual Run-off Utilized in the Nation's Interest By SENATOR F. C. NEWLANDS (Since 1907 Senator Newlands has been endeavoring persistently to secure the passage of his Water Control Bill...
...There is no good reason why such methods, perhaps somewhat changed to meet the different conditions, cannot be adopted in the entire farming area of the United States, wherever there is soil erosion, leaching out of salts, drought, or floods...
...A natural result of this is that not enough moisture is stored in the soil, and when a period of drought comes during the growing season of the crop there is a failure for lack of moisture...
...It may be possible that if all the houses hereafter built in the country are provided with hulls, masts, rudders and other means of enabling them to float with the tide, great loss might at some time and place be saved...
...The legislative machinery can be easily organized if Congress can be induced to heed the popular demand that it shall be done...
...that is to say, the obstruction of run-off...
...Long experimenting has demonstrated its effectiveness in increasing absorption and preventing run-off...
...All the Government need do is to provide the means of their education and for the demonstration of proper methods...
...Where irrigation is practised, a method of conserving the moisture is used which is precisely analogous to that which I have attempted to describe...
...What is needed in the rivers is not alternating extremes of high and low water, but steadiness and stability of flow...
...There is a limit to the volume of Water which can properly be absorbed by cultivated lands, and in many places drainage would have to be provided...
...and they greatly deplore what seems to them the shortsightedness and selfishness in the attitude of the advocates of a levees-only policy...
...Just now, while the public interest is aroused, is a good time to settle whatever differences we have and to come together in well considered plans for the common good...
...The object is to hold back the flood water and check the run-off, temporarily...
...Every man who has lived in a wooded country knows by his own observation how the dead leaves, branches and undergrowth hold the water in check, causing it to soak into the soil and forming a spongy blanket over the earth, from which the water oozes slowly into the rills...
...Instead of doing things, we are at each other's throats on the question whether anything whatever can be, or shall be, done...
...I am fully of the opinion, however, that if the people of Pittsburgh and other places along the Ohio River can be protected by such means, we have no right to refuse them this protection...
...One public man has even gone so far as to say: " Reservoirs and dams would have served no good purpose...
...We are indebted to the "Independent" for the following concise and informative article by Senator Newlands...
...Paul during the dry season has been increased, by this means, an average maximum of eighteen inches...
...If there is ever a time when controversy is desirable, this is certainly not such a time...
...It is something which the farmers can and ought to do for themselves...
...Their en-gineers found certain favorably situated spots, now known as the "seventeen selected sites," where, by the construction of storage dams, they believe enough flood water can be impounded to reduce the crest of the flood below the line of danger...
...The population and wealth of this region have been enormously increased by this discovery of a method of storing rainfall in the soil...
...that it would be an economy of cost and effort and a saving of time to take the work up in its larger aspects now...
...In this proposed program, the storage of water in reservoirs is only one of several means...
...and at the same time the very use to which it was put would increase its fertility and value...
...The storage of large bodies of water in this manner for the regulation of the water supply of Canals and rivers is no experiment, but a well-known and approved method of engineering work...
...As a matter of fact, both these effects follow in varying degrees, depending upon such elements as the quantity of the rainfall, the condition of the soil, the slope of the surface, and the obstructions to run-off which may exist...
...It has been estimated that these classes of lands form fully half the area of the State of Ohio, and if these methods were adopted, this fact would greatly enhance the benefits derived...
...but according to the inadequacy of the obstructions, it rushes so much the more swiftly and destructively into the tributaries and thence into the rivers...
...Use the Forests FIRST among the means of obstructing runoff is the preservation of our forests, where they still exist, and of replanting them, so far as possible, where they have been destroyed...
...The only instance in operation is that on the headwaters of the Mississippi designed to control about 11 per cent...
...The enterprising men of Pittsburgh, weary of their large annual losses, raised a fund and expended it in a scientific study of the means of flood control...
...Storage in the Soil A FOURTH means of river regulation and flood prevention, and perhaps the most important one, is by the prevention of soil erosion and storage of water in the soil itself...
...I wish to make it very clear that this last suggestion is not a proposal for a raid upon the treasury...
...No reservoir system for the purpose proposed has yet been completed in this country...
...but with the classes of land above mentioned there is practically no limit to the moisture that can be profitably absorbed...
...The most conspicuous project of this kind at present is with reference to the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which, coming together at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River, are often both in flood at the same time and cause great loss at Pittsburgh, as well as at points farther down the Ohio River...
...Will the interest that has been aroused in means of flood prevention be as lasting and well directed as the response to appeals for help has been prompt and generous...
...Clouds of Controversy UNFORTUNATELY, we have not yet a settled policy for the conservation of our natural resources, and the problems of river regulation and flood control are obscured by clouds of controversy...
...The soil itself would become the greatest of all storage reservoirs, one of unimaginable extent and capacity...
...When water falls from the clouds, in the form of rain, upon the ground, it either runs off or is absorbed into it...
...and that then ample funds shall be provided for carrying out the plans in the most substantial and scientific manner...
...The opponents of this policy appear to hope, by substituting a part for the whole and by attributing to its advocates ideas which never entered their minds, to discredit it in men's minds...
...and I feel sure we are all seeking the same ends, even though by somewhat diverse means--the prevention of loss by flood, the promotion and maintenance of the navigability of our rivers, and the preservation and use of our resources for the best advantage of all...
...An inestimable benefit was conferred upon the cotton planters of the South by the late Dr...
...The production of grass for hay and grazing would also be greatly stimulated...
...Along with this decay the character of the rivers themselves has been slowly changing, the fluctuations between high and low water growing greater, the floods rising higher and becoming more and more destructive...
...Certain statements of government engineers and others as to the rate of river flow during high water and the size of the reservoirs needed to restrain all the water precipitated during a season of rainfall have been widely heralded as proof that nothing whatever can be done...
...It may be that the advocates of an enlarged policy have not taken sufficient pains to explain how these things are related to each other...
...Once shown that it is profitable, self-interest would lead them to do it...
...Thus the water is collected in level furrows and between them the ridges stand guard...
...It is the steady expansion of our planted and cultivated home area that is largely responsible for the growing floods, because the removal of forests and the cultivation of the soil in careless and unscientific methods both tend to facilitate rapid run-off and increase floods...
...It presents a subject of exceeding interest throughout the nation at the present moment, and explains the various aspects of this problem of making Water serve instead, of devastating the nation--a problem still before Congress.--Editor's Note...
...Where this is practised the plowing is done in narrow "lands, "so that there are alternate furrows and ridges...
...What is Proposed...
...A casual reading of several influential papers for the past few days might not unreasonably lead the reader to understand that the advocates of the broadening of the river improvement and flood control policy imagine that all the rain falling from the clouds, over the entire country, can be impounded in dams and prevented from reaching the rivers...
...To the extent to which it is absorbed, it moistens the ground and is held by it for a longer or shorter time...
...If the absorption and retention of moisture in the soil of cultivated land could be increased, the following results may be confidently expected to follow: Soil loss by leaching and erosion would be greatly reduced, run-off would be diminished, floods would be checked, failure of crops by drought would be abolished, and navigation would be facilitated...
...If reservoirs create floods when they break, then they will prevent floods when they hold fast...
...The nature of Ms plan is suggested in the title of his bill--"To create a board of river regulation and to provide a fund for the regulation and control of the flow of navigable rivers in aid of interstate commerce and as a means to that end to provide for flood prevention and protection and for the beneficial use of flood waters and for water storage and for the protection of water sheds from denudation and erosion and from forest fires and for the co-operation of government services and bureaus with each other and with states, municipalities and other agencies...
...All this is very interesting, but quite beside the mark, because nothing of the kind has ever been proposed, so far as I am aware...
...of the drainage area above St...
...Now, aside from the fact, just out, that such statements are based upon an entire misapprehension of our purposes, the truth appears to be that the disasters in Ohio were aggravated by the giving way of a number of ancient dams, some of them dating back to the year 1840, which were known to be unsafe, and which Ohio governors and boards of public works have for years been vainly trying to have reconstructed...
...Some of the present beneficiaries of this work, however, object to the enlargement of its scope to include other means of river regulation and flood prevention, contending that these things are all that can be done or ought to be done...
...and to the extent to which it runs off, it carries away with it part of the soil itself into the stream...
...It is hardly possible to take very seriously the gentlemen who argue that forests do not impede run-off...
...Paul...
...And this not upon the cultivated fields, alone, but also and more especially upon the meadows, pastures, wood lots and waste lauds...
...only lack of funds has prevented their spreading the light...
...The fact is, the bursting of reservoirs added to the total of damage to life and property...
...Every year the sums demanded for this kind of work grow greater and more insistent, and every year the situation grows worse...
...It would seem, however, that there would be little difficulty or expense involved in putting the matter to a thorough test...
...That such ideas should be attributed to them is not very complimentary to the eminent scientists who are advocating water storage in the interest of river regulation and flood prevention, to the level-headed business men and skilled engineers who are preparing to initiate well planned works to this end, or to the hundreds of business men, chambers of commerce, boards of trade and organizations of local and national scope which have endorsed my proposal for a comprehensive study of the problem and the preparation of adequate plans...
Vol. 5 • April 1913 • No. 16
