A preliminary report has been made for tlie area of the Merrimack 

 River Valley between Manchester and Nashua, New Hampshire. Since the 

 agriculture of the whole valley is heterogeneous, it is not possible to expand 

 the analysis for the Manchester section to the whole river. The rest of the 

 study will be completed soon. 



Damages of several types occur from flooding agricultural land. The 

 greater part of these are associated with land and crops on the land, but 

 some damages occur to buildings and livestock. Of the damages to land, 

 some are immediate in that growing crops are effected in some way, some 

 are of short-run effect to the land causing temporary loss of crop yields, and 

 some are of long-run effect in that land is lost permanently for agricultural 

 purposes or crop yields are permanently reduced. 



For the Manchester-Nashua section of the Merrimack River, 7^ 

 miles of the 116 mile length of the river, the flood damages in the 1936 

 floods are summarized in the following table. These figures are taken from 

 the actual experiences of farmers obtained by a survey of all farms in the 

 area. 



Agricultural Damages, Reach 8, Merrimack River, 1936 Flood 



Type and Duration Damages 



(dollars) (percent) 



Buildings $ 3,000. 2.7 



Livestock 



Land and Crops 



Immediate 1,100. 1.0 



Short-run 42,104. 38.0 



Long-run 63,158. 57.0 



Miscellaneous" 1,515. 1.3 



Total $110,877. lOO.O 



^ Fences, irrigation, drainage, small structures. 



Others floods have caused damage, but to a much lesser extent than 

 the 1936 flood. The extent of these losses will be determined for the whole 

 river valley. 



The farmers were asked specifically if the general flood danger from the 

 river had affected their land use and whether the reduction in flood danger 

 after the construction of the reservoirs affected their land use. Most of the 

 farmers stated that the reservoir operation had been beneficial, but that 

 flood danger before or after construction did not affect their land use. They 

 would not change their particular use of land if the river were fully 

 controlled. 



The same answer was made to the question regarding any enhance- 

 ment in the use value of the land. Most farmers felt that the construction 

 of the dams did not make certain lands usable for intensive cropping which 

 were not usable before. 



This means that to a considerable extent the farming decisions made 

 in the river valley are not based at all on danger of floods. Some minor ad- 

 justments are made in vegetable farming because of the danger of water 

 covering certain acreages in the spring, but farmers maintained that these 

 adjustments were of small consequence to their operations. 



W. F. Henry 

 14 



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