TENNESSEE RIVER IMPROVEMENT AND 



SEDIMENTATION 



A reply to the testimony of Capt« Edward N, Johnston, U, S, Army, before the House 

 Committee on Agriculture, on March 2, 1910, when considering the Weeks Bill 



By L. C. GLENN, Ph,D,, Professor of Geology, Vanderbilt University 



AT SEVERAL hearings in recent 

 years before the Committee on 

 Agriculture of the House of Rep- 

 resentatives, the writer has given testi- 

 mony as to the harmful effect the ma- 

 terial eroded from the steep head- 

 water mountain slopes of the Tennessee 

 River Basin is to-day having on the 

 navigable portion of that stream. 



At the hearing on March 2, 1910, in 

 response to an invitation extended by 

 the committee to the army engineer's of- 

 fice, for information on the same sub- 

 ject, Capt. Edward N. Johnston ap- 

 peared as the representative of that 

 office. After being questioned by the 

 chairman to develop for the committee 

 the fact that he was "familiar with the 

 reports and the literature on the sub- 

 ject" — not only published but unpub- 

 lished — Captain Johnston said, in be- 

 ginning, that there had developed among 

 the engineers of the corps "a feeling 

 of irritation at the fact that certain 

 parties interested in forests, or others, 

 have deemed it necessary to criticise the 

 methods which have been followed up 

 to the present time in the improvement 

 of streams by the engineer department. 

 Our hair bristled up, perhaps quite nat- 

 urally, at some of these criticisms, and 

 also because we feel that this com- 

 mittee has been furnished, probably un- 

 intentionally, with a considerable amount 

 of misinformation on these subjects." 



He then proceeds to quote at such 

 length from the writer's testimony be- 

 fore the committee on January 30, 1908, 

 that there can be no doubt as to one, 

 at least, of those he thinks responsible 



for this misinformation, 

 quotation is as follows : 



His first 



I will take the Tennessee River. It is the 

 largest and most important one, and it is a 

 fair type of the rest of them. At Knoxville, 

 Tenn., the head of navigation on the river, 

 650 miles above its mouth, I found a govern- 

 ment fleet there — not one or two boats, but 

 a fleet — engaged in dredging the channel and 

 keeping it navigable. They dredge on a bar 

 this summer, and they go back next summer 

 and dredge the same bar. It fills up as fast 

 as it is dredged out, and it is practically an 

 unending work. They are receiving the ef- 

 fects of the erosion of the steep mountain 

 slopes. They are helpless. 



***** 



The natural fill becomes concentrated along 

 the side of the island, and it is there that 

 bars begin forming, and it is there that the 

 United States Army engineers must step in 

 and begin with their dams and locks and 

 spend millions of dollars in improvement. 



He proceeds to refute the statements 

 as to the importance of sand and gravel 

 bars in the river, and tries to make it 

 appear that the great majority of the 

 obstructions down to Chattanooga are 

 hard rock ledges. In order to do this 

 he quotes from an old report of an ex- 

 amination made by Lieut.-Col. S. H. 

 Long, in 1830 — eighty years ago. If 

 Captain Johnston is at all familiar with 

 the subject on which he was testifying 

 as the official representative of his de- 

 partment, he would know that one of 

 the essential features of the contention 

 of the advocates of forestry is that, as 

 a result of the clearing of forests on 

 steep slopes and the consequent increased 

 erosion, sedimentation has become much 



419 



