A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



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NAVIGATION 



Water transport plays an important role in the distribution of 

 goods in some parts of the United States. The inland waterways of 

 the country, exclusive of the Great Lakes and interior and intra- 

 coastal canals, carried 130 million short tons of freight in 1929. From 

 the founding of the Republic the improvement and maintenance of 

 navigable channels and harbors has been a Federal responsibility. 

 Immense sums have been spent by the War Department in the deep- 

 ening and widening of natural channels, and in engineering works to 

 make navigation possible during periods of low water. On a single 

 stream the Ohio River the Army engineers built 49 locks and dams, 

 at a total cost of some $1 18,000,000. The sums spent by the Federal 

 Government on existing river and harbor projects, nearly all begun 

 during the last 50 years, are shown in table 3 for each of the drainage 

 regions later described in detail. 



TABLE 3. Expenditures by the Federal Government on existing river and harbor 

 projects directly connected with stream flow to June 80, 1932 l 



1 Obtained from the Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army, pt. I, 1932. Sums spent on 

 harbor breakwaters, canals, and other similar improvements not connected with natural streams and 

 hence not influenced by cover conditions have been omitted from the compilation. 



FLOODS 



Floods on the lower Mississippi River of the magnitude of that of 

 1927, which inundated 18,000 square miles, drove 750,000 people from 

 their homes, did some $300,000,000 worth of damage, and took 246 

 lives, so far overshadow disasters on lesser streams as to obscure the 

 almost Nation-wide importance of local floods. Flood damage in 

 South Carolina has averaged nearly $1,000,000 a year for the last 20 

 years, and in Tennessee has been about the same. In table 4 are 

 given some of the major floods occurring in the present century on 

 streams other than the Mississippi River, but the record is far from 

 complete. 



