THE RIVERS: OUR REATEST RESOURCE
The Rivers: Our reatest Resource MVA and the Inland Empire By Jerome G. Locke Member, Regional Committee /or MVA AMAJORITY of the people in the Missouri Valley now think the present Congress...
...MVA spells such betterment, and spells doom to any thoughts of further tightening the colonial status of the Missouri Valley...
...More exhaustive engineering studies now show that under the normal rainfall conditions, there will not be enough water in the Missouri River from Yankton...
...Lawrenie' seaway...
...Republican Gov ornor Finest Gibson asked for tho creation of a State Power Authority "with power to build generating plants, transmission lines, to buy and sell t leetricily, and to issue bonds and secure capital...
...hillgloll, I...
...It is also (|Uite possible that MVA can put...
...Jerome Locke points out in the article at leftjd represent the largest single domestic undertaking of the States government...
...There is no merit in the recently raised cry "Missouri Valley people don't want MVA...
...Even more important, the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut...
...What the Sloan plan proposed was to furnish additional water to about 750,000 acres of land, now under insufficient supply, and to bring an additional four and a half million acres of land under irrigation for the first tune...
...Instead, it proposed enlarging the stream and then building a set of double-bank levees from Sioux City to the river mouth...
...The ramifications of MVA are somewhat breath-taking...
...While New England projects for specific valley authorities will continue to be pushed because, requiring less funds, llioy are more feasible politically, the iillimafe solution for New England hi an overall regional authority...
...Only the miracle of a sudden frost, which changed the rain to harmless snow, prevented a major disaster...
...S. D., to Herman, Mo., to carry out both plans...
...But antagonism and ill feeling between the two agencies still exists...
...No man can possibly foresee all the implications of the industrialization which this project and its abundance of cheap power can bring...
...Except for small portions of Iowa and Missouri, flu Valley has, from the beginning, subsisted on an agrarian economy...
...The MVA bill sponsored by Senators Murray, Humphrey, and Gillette stands a better than even chance of passing, despite the priority given by the Administration to Columbia River development...
...But this week's floods on the Missouri are|jhening demands for an MVA...
...OF ALL THE REFORMS oiLfyears...
...Locke was the Army's Chief Engineer in charge of design and construction during ihe last war...
...The TV A idea-J*e federal government should help stimulate effective and uaiftejonal action for flood control, cheap power, irrigation, and prta of fertilizer, and that this can be done on a paying bajfflHfc re-echoed 1st scores of other such proposals for other areas...
...But as soon as Senator Murray introduced the bill, the Tories applied political pressure of all kinds, and the result was the PickSloan plan...
...Its people, particularly the small farmers, workers, independent professionals, and small businessmen, are horrified at the thought of another 1930-1940 depression...
...With the threat of the Murray bill afid tho ensuing merger, the bickering has subsided...
...not to a handful of exploiters of natural resources...
...The much touted plan thus becomes mucrhl'ke Hitler's ersatz bread, which was three-fourths sawdust...
...The moral is obvious enough The same rivers that were flooding towns in Massachusetts and Vermont on NewYear's eve should be harnessed to pro vide the'' cheap power to keep New England's factories going...
...The MVA bill plans complete flood protection, better use of soil, more general and safer sanitation, and large increases in fish and wild life...
...It cannot be set up by ten individual states...
...Through planning arid coordination, MVA can create a new inland Empire that will become a source of pride and economic strength to the pnder-dog masses of the Valley and to the nation as a whole...
...JUf.IUS A. KRUG...
...Fishermen arc bitter ovci the disappearance ol' the shad from the upper Coi.....client, while salmon runs on the Merrimack are a thing of the past...
...The Pick plan did-not think of decreasing the torrential stream already going into a jug that is in constant danger of overflow...
...In addition, it will put an end to the unsuccessful shot-gun marriage of the Army Engineers Corp and the Bureau of Reclamation which gave birth to the so-called Pick-Sloan plan for Missouri Valley development...
...In one street in North Adams, rocks and dirt were piled six feet high...
...And, most important of all, it provides for cheap and abundant public power...
...The idyllic Berkshire Festival towns of the Housatonic valley were covered with silt and rubble...
...from sis Ne.-z England tab ; to the lii st national e-oii - hi- rue on rive1 valley deve-lopme lit .a...
...THE WESTERN PHOSPHATE beds, at the headwaters of the Missouri, will become available as much-needed fertilizer to 17 or 18 bread-basket states...
...Thomas J. Lane of Lawrence introduced II.R...
...Half a dozen other mine and (iiiiirry product...
...In 103(1 and 1938, when far worse tt*K>ds had hit New England, efjorts at Hood control were damned as government paternalism and a reflection on Yankee ingenuity...
...Under new processes being developed, these resources give every promise of soon furiiishing"oils, gases, and possibly plastics...
...Two of those years were spent w'th ihe Bureau of Reclamation when <t was first organized...
...If the flowing nine-foot deep navigation channel of the Pick Plan is to bo maintained, only enough water for three million acres of irrigation will remain...
...463 to create a Merrimack Valley Authority...
...C , liter- I 'ii .' gsasd planning 111 New Kosl, : d v dl b • I y-falll/i-d for lb(> litst t.....- hen ili-legal...
...In 'lolvoke, Francis King, director uf the Municipal Gas and Electric Depart incut, found new adheionl ; in his light against the private utilities lor control of l)n po-.vei site on the ('omiieticiit, notably industrialist Roger Putnam, former Mayor ol Spi mgfiehl...
...If MVA does become law, it will be the largest and possibly the most farreaching development program ever sponsored by the Federal Government a long range and thoroughly planned program of 'general and continuing economic betterment...
...If the rapid action on Hood control was a notable development in a region that had traditionally accepted floods resigned 1 v, the change in attitude on public power has been even more striking...
...Had it been passed then, Congress could have saved millions of dollars...
...m THE PICK PLAN, sponsored by the Army Engineers, is designed to control floods along the lower reaches of the Missouri, and to build a flowing ninefoot deep navigation channel from the river mouth to Sioux City, Iowa—a distance of 770 river miles...
...It must have the blessing and assistance of the Federal Government...
...Despite reams of gaudy propaganda ebont "what we are going to do," the Pick-Sloan plan has made little progress toward real Valley development...
...Thus they apparently ignore the fact that all irrigation consumes water...
...There is little industrialization...
...The Bureau of Reclamation has been harried by uncertainty of appropriations, fear of offending reactionary elements, narrow and restricted legal authority, and the interference of Congressional friends of the power trust...
...tiial wastes...
...In following this line of thought, the Army Engineers under ihe Pick paid little attention to flood prevention, much of which can be accomplished by increasing water consumption in the Upper Valley...
...upper twothirds of the Valley...
...4 THE SLOAN PLAN, under the Bureau of Reclamation, was not a plan for full Missouri Valley development either...
...At least one bill will be introduced this month to establish a Connecticut Valley Authority...
...Vermont and New Hampshire signed a Con necticMt River Hood control pact...
...the one that has captured public sentiment nnfi-j'r *» the Tennessee Valley Authority...
...Unemployment compensation claims in New England have soared 52"., in the past year...
...It can irrigate eight to ten million acres of arid land...
...This only operates toward wrecking chances for full Valley development in the future...
...The Rivers: Our reatest Resource MVA and the Inland Empire By Jerome G. Locke Member, Regional Committee /or MVA AMAJORITY of the people in the Missouri Valley now think the present Congress will write a Missouri Valley Authority into the nation's lawbooks...
...mi cud to the perennial domestic shortage of manganese, sincis vast bed...
...Since Hoed control legislation was clearly imperii live, tins problem u as tackled first...
...These plans were, and still are...
...Westfield, a town of 20.000...
...of Franklin, N. II., attacked the Manchester Moriiinu Union as a -piikeanan for tho private utilities, Hie conservative editor hotly replied that we have repeatedly attacked the clce trie power utilities in this case the Bellows Falls llyilrnelectric Corpora I nut and the New England System for their wantonness in seeking to devastate the rich farm lands along the Connecticut River...
...Such a project is clearly beyond private purses...
...JEROME G. LOCKE has spent almost twenty-five years specialising in irrigation and western development work...
...Moreover, a New England authority would ultimately have to bo concerned with more basic economic changes in roll, oiling the Ncvv England economy than is the TVA, which has been concerned ,vith a relatively undeveloped region vhere water resources are much more important than in New England today...
...lo provide for a comprehensive survey to promote the development of hydroelectric power, flood control, and other improvement on the Merrimack and Connecticut rivers and such other rivers in the New England slates where improvements are feasible...
...Angus of f'laremont introduced a bill eai ly in January to establish a New Hampshire Bower Authority "to prevent power trusts from further use of water power re siiuiees...
...1'iiee in New Yen I: on February ugi;< tui," a ii ileal power authority lor Nc-.v Yo, k Slate and N<-w England, ha id on llii' development eif the St...
...These beds contain over sixty percent of all the high grade phosphate rock in the United States...
...Even Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who led the fight against the St...
...Nor do they relish again becoming wards of national charity and recipients of the dole, as full half the population of largo areas then did...
...NOR ARE FLOOD CONTROL and power the milv esues Timber land: have been badly iivercul, having desolate stretches of land in Noil hern New England, where little brooks become swollen ciieks, opening gullies and causing downstiearn tlonds in the major liver valley...
...Its soil conservation programs, to check annual erosion and migration of millions of tons of valuable top soil, are badly needed now »nd will -still be needed 100 years from now...
...Much of tinarea is sparsely settled...
...was cut off from the world...
...I tn plan tin cre-al ion of a Nov/ Enghiiiil committee on regional planning...
...For when water is diverted from a stream and spread on a parched field, anywhere from a quarter to three quarters of the water diverted never gets back to the stream...
...Thus the Pick end of the plan, with more money to spend and more "influence" behind it, has started several major projects...
...IN A SPECIAL MESSAGE to die Vermont legislature...
...Lawrence seaway in the 80th Congress, has introduced a bill...
...Wah r pollution was feared in Lee and Stockbridge...
...Unlike the Corps of Engineers, which made no mention of hydro-electric power in its initial plan, the Bureau of Reclamation did propose some incidental power development in connection with a few of the 90 reservoirs and dams it proposed to create...
...appear to exist in MifVuii nt abundance to reduce Ihe necessity of national stock piling by I importation...
...These, in short, are the outlines of MVA, first presented by Senator Murray in August, 1044...
...of low grade manganese ore have been uncovered near Pierre, South Dakota...
...King doelai eel that Truman, who ha...
...One important mill after another has been moved to the South because of the dearth of power in New Enqland as well as the quest for cheat) labor in the Carolines...
...Hundreds of billions of tons of anthracite and semi-bituminous coal underlie eastern Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming...
...In New Hampshire, State Representative George I...
...Unfortunately, the now flood control compacts once more play into the hands of the private power interests, but the good faith of the respective slate administrations cannot be questioned, and the compacts are expecled lo be rewritten with more attention Id future power sites...
...In the article »i right, William Eehtenberg telle what happened when similar Hoods struck New fet last winter...
...and typhoid serum was rushed to the urea...
...the lower valley is semi humid and too frequently the victim of devastating Hoods...
...A Captain of Engineers in World War I, Col...
...The levees would preserve a part of the lower valley from the floods...
...They seemed to assume that little more would be done to extend irrigation in those arid regions...
...In any milltown in the Merrimack valley, you can hear men talk ing anxiously about layoffs at the plant or whether another factory will move away...
...Vast oil shale deposits are in Colorado...
...Nor was it even a plan for maximum extension of irrigation in the Valley's arid regions...
...Airraid sirens sounded in the night to warn residents of the Westfiold River valley to evacuate their homes...
...When a four-state Hood control compact was drafted in 1037, three utility company attorneys wrot -¦ a provision into the agreement to end federal power control An alert Congress preserved our federal power policy by killing the compact, but as a result New England got neither flood control nor power...
...The Boston Herald typified press reaction in blaming the Moods on "financial niggardliness" and "the lack of an interstate compact" on flood .control Three weeks later, Governor Paul Dover asked the Massachusetts state legislature for a two million dollar grant for flood relief in the lloosac and Housatonic valleys, and then took off to;- Washington to request federal flood control action...
...For instance, irrigation of ten million acres of land will, on the average, consume about fifteen million acre feet of water a year...
...Application of the TVA ideatfMissourl Valley...
...The upper two-thirds of the valley is semi-arid and subject to prolonged periods oi drought...
...Conversely, if only the four and a half million acres scheduled for irrigation under the Sloan plan—and representing less than half the valley"s potential is to be served, there cannot be a nine-foot deep flowing channel...
...According to Federal Power Commission Engineers, it can liberate 25 billion kilowatt hours of prime electric current a year...
...Such consumption would sharply reduce the flow to be controlled at the lower river...
...Of course, in such a situation,'the two government agencies quarreled openly and vociferously...
...Asserting that such a Northeastern Authority "would be a* favoiabli- from Ihe viewpoint of cost as the- Tennessee' Valley Authority...
...When the rivers subsided and the dreary work of reconstruction slowly began, the citizens of western New England counted four dead and over a thousand homeless...
...The power fanrne was so severe a year ago that naval vessels from Pearl Harbor were anchored off the Maine coast to generate enough electricity to l'g'nt the towns...
...It plans a navigation channel that may finally run 1,800 miles back into the hinterland...
...Blasoned throughout the nation by the ultra-conservative press as "a new conception for full valley development," Pick-Sloan is actually a hasty and half-hearted merger of two small-scale and contradictory programs of 1933 vintage...
...0 * * NO SUBSTANTIAL ECONOMIC advancement has been made by the Missouri Valley in the last 25 years...
...The floods left death, misery and destruction...
...An acre foot is the amount of water needed t<> cover one acre one fool deep...
...THE FLOODS ALSO left an aroused citizenry determined that it wouldn't happen again...
...THE NORTH ADAMS Tnnei-npf urged communities- in the llnosac val lev, where there have bit 11 four serious Hoods in the last :'.\ \eais...
...S. 353...
...Although the vision behind its projects has been largely in the right direction, the Sloan end has made even less progress...
...In Great Barrington, where roads wei e a foot under water, the Iloi'satoni,' rose two feet higher than in the gnat floods of 1038...
...Although he served sixteen months as Montana manager of the Civilian Production Administration, he has spent most of ihe last four years attempting to help promote an MVA for the Missouri Valley, TVA for New England By William E. Leuchtenberg Boston Director, Americans for Democratic Action FED BY HOURS of torrential rains and days of rapidly melting snows, the rivers of western New England roared over their banks early last New Years' eve in t'»e worst flood in a decade...
...On January 3, Rep...
...Much has happened in New England tmce 1938...
...In the meantime, great, masses of Missouri Valley people are no longer content to continue under "boom and bust" conditions...
...The Army engineers were not concerned with future development in tin...
...When Senator Eugene S. Darnell Jr...
...The total cost to Berkshire County alone was over two million dollars...
...THE ARMY ENGINEERS naturally bad more political strength during the period of reaction leading up to the last election...
...Secretary of tho ioteiior, went even further in a new* r urife...
...All highways out of Pittsfield were flooded...
...conflicting, antagonistic, and impossible of complete fulfillment...
...The valley may also yield coal and oil...
...They want to develop tho raw and potentially rich area they have adopted as a homeland...
...They want betterment, a betterment that will be applied to all...
...As Seymour Harris's survey dolefully concluded: "New England is not developing new in duslries rapidly enough to take the p.'ace of tottering ones...
...Stream pollution com plctoly pods the beautiful Connecticut, as a recreation center, and people in : ucii largo inilllowiis as Lowell and Lawrence ai> without adequate recre .,1 ioii.il facilities In-cause the Mei i i mack, the lovely stream of Thoreau' . voyage, has been finned into an open sewer lor indii...
...The industrial city of North Adams was isolated by the rain-swollen lloosac River...
...The idea of multi-purpose river valley development, the TVA approach to floods and power and erosion, which had once been spurned as Government boondoggling, is receiving serious consideration in New England today for the first time...
...ciiine out flatly for a Columbia Valley Authoi ity, will folio - a policy of power distribution mi a iii/onal lather than tale l..i a . I m Api ll 21 in \Y...
...to demand a lloosac val lev Hood control authoi ity Mayor James Bowc ol Adams and his board of seleetmenr* demanded a restudy of the $I4,OOOiiOOO-^ood control project which had been shelved just two years ago as unjustified...
...It provides for parks, playgrounds, and millions of acr^s of mountain recreation areas...
...Unfortunately, most of these have the primary purpose of supplying water to the Lower Valley navigation channel—90 percent of it Upper Valley irrigation water...
...The embattled Vermont farmers regarded the attempts of the Army Engineers to dam the West River valley as a foreign invasion by a hostile power...
...MVA's vast tree-planting program- will enable the valley to catch up with and finally offset the increasing havoc that results from rapidly vanishing timber resources...
...When one remembers the large role played by phosphates in supporting TVA, this ligure alone becomes staggering...
...wh<le the stales of New Hampshire and Massachusetts reached a similar agreement to curb the Merrimack...
Vol. 32 • March 1949 • No. 11
