MILLIONS APPROPRIATED FOR 



LEVEES. 



By GUY E. MITCHELL. 



The history of levee construction on the Mississippi river has 

 been a long one. The first levee was begun in 1717, which was, when 

 completed, one mile long, erected to protect New Orleans, then a mere 

 village. This levee was four feet high and eighteen feet across at 

 the top. It was not, however, until after Louisiana had been ceded 

 to the United States that levee construction was begun on a large 

 scale an enlarged and systematic scale. As the work progressed up 

 the river and additional basins and bottoms were enclosed, the levees 

 necessarily increased in height. The average height of the levees in 

 Louisiana, above New Orleans, in now between twelve and thirteen 

 feet, and this height proved insufficient in the great flood of 1897. 

 This flood indicates to the official engineers that three or four feet ad- 

 ditional will be required. 



Millions and millions of dollars have been appropriated by the 

 Federal Government for the building of these levees and other con- 

 structions intended to protect the surrounding country from floods, 

 and millions more must he appropriated by every Congress to come 

 unless other steps are taken to prevent these floods. The measures 

 of the government are merely palliative; they do not go to the root of 

 the evil. The report of Captain Hiram Chittenden, of the Govern- 

 ment Engineer Corps, however, shows that there is a way to strike at 

 the trouble itself, and largely prevent the floods instead of trying to 

 enclose them between banks after they have become such. 



He shows in his official reports that, by the building of a series of 

 great storage reservoirs at the head waters of the Missouri, floods can 

 be prevented through the diverting of the excess of waters into these 

 artificial lakes. Surely this is something for Congress to give its at- 

 tention to. Here is a practical plan. An ounce of prevention is 

 worth a pound of cure. Congress will go ahead appropriating millions 

 every session for flood prevention without a question, but it will not 

 appropriate the same amount for a plan, which, according to the 

 government's own engineers, promises far greater results. Of course, 

 the storing of these reservoirs would mean the reclamation of large 

 tracts of land to irrigation; but this need not worry Congress, even in 

 eas tern members, for the eastern merchants are already alive to the 

 situation, and realize that the reclamation of the arid West would 

 open to them the finest market in the world. 



