NO FOOD NEWS FROM CHATTANOOGA
McMillin, Miles
No Flood News From Chattanooga By MILES McMILLIN AT this time of the year you can look at any newspaper and if you don't find at least one story of a destructive flood somewhere in the United...
...The 1944 report contains only 3 short paragraphs on the subject of flood control, mentioning casually that the reservoirs operated to reduce flood heights at Chattanooga...
...Estimated savings in flood damages in the 4 largest of these totals some $4,500,000...
...At some points in the mountains on the eastern rim, the fall totaled 10 to 12 inches...
...The people there are the masters of the River...
...This was the eighth flood which had been reduced at Chattanooga since the TVA placed its first reservoir, Norris, in operation...
...To meet the situation, the entire flows from the Holston, the Clinch, and the Hiwassee Rivers were cut off for a time by stopping the flow at Cherokee, Norris, and Hiwassee tributary reservoirs...
...It is a long, meandering river with cities built, in many instances, on the River's broad curves...
...A flood of large size occurred in December 1942 and January 1943 when enough rain fell in 72 hours to average 41/2 inches for the 40,000 square miles of the Tennessee Valley watershed...
...The last item I read about Chattanooga had something to do with a new rate reduction for the consumers of municipally distributed power...
...There was a time when the same could be said of the Tennessee River...
...In the Tennessee Valley floods seem to have become a part of history...
...One of the principal functions of the TVA was to provide flood control for the badly harassed people in the Valley...
...Yet, the Chamber of Commerce in Cincinnati, where the Ohio this Spring inflicted particularly heavy damage, would probably rise to the man to fight any proposal to harness the Ohio and make it a friend instead of an enemy...
...In the first few years of its existence the Authority's annual reports devoted considerable attention to this phase of its work, setting forth what flood conditions had existed and what had been done to combat them...
...The Tennessee was particularly destructive...
...The argument in these cases seems to be that any effort to prevent loss of lives, destruction of property, and all the other results of uncontrolled water is an interference with "free enterprise...
...There have recently been reports of floods in the East, floods in Arkansas, floods in Ohio, floods along the Mississippi...
...Meanwhile, the friends of floods in Congress are winning the battle against bottling up the Missouri River, which in the past has shown a remarkable ability to jump its banks and wander all over the landscape...
...The 1943 report, for example, records the flood news for that year...
...Lives were lost, transportation tied up, damage ran into millions of dollars, and vital war industries were closed down...
...Its tributaries were fed by the mountain ranges to the east where some of the heaviest rainfalls of the country occur...
...In the Ohio Valley, it was demonstrated, the River is still the master of the people...
...Less than a decade ago about this time of the year, the people who live along the Tennessee were devoting their energies 24 hours out of the day to keeping "dat old debbil river away from my door...
...At the same time, Wants Bar and Chickamauga Reservoirs on the main stream were used strategically to cut about 4 feet from the crest of the flood as it passed Chattanooga, where war production and other plants are located near the River, "The reduction averted damage estimated at more than $1,000,000...
...Chattanooga, which used to be in the headlines regularly when the flood season rolled around, hasn't hit the front pages with a first class disaster for many years...
...The water now works for, not against them...
...No Flood News From Chattanooga By MILES McMILLIN AT this time of the year you can look at any newspaper and if you don't find at least one story of a destructive flood somewhere in the United States you'd better consult an eye doctor...
...The rampage of the Ohio River a few weeks ago was one of the most disastrous in history for the people who live along its banks...
...Since the advent of the Tennessee Valley Authority, however, the cities along the Tennessee have been getting very little publicity in this connection...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 14
