Making Floods Work 



How Water Users' Associations cooperate to utilize streams 



THE ideal river is one that has the 

 same flow every day in the year. 

 But, with rare exceptions, rivers do 

 not flow that way. At one season of the 

 year, the river runs bankful, or even over- 

 flows and causes enormous damage and 

 suffering. And then, a few months later, it 

 is shrunken to a point where navigation is 

 at a standstill, water power plants must 

 shut down, water supplies are inferior and 

 sometimes inadequate or unusable, and 

 sewage and trade-wastes are so concen- 

 trated in the scanty flow that a dangerous 

 nuisance exists. 



Regulating the flow of a river so that the 

 water formerly wasted in flood times will 

 be available during the dry weather' is a 



form of water conservation that has been 

 very thoroughly developed in Germany, 

 both as to the engineering works required 

 and the necessary legal machinery to pro- 

 vide for their construction and operation. 



In the valleys of many of the German 

 rivers, a large part of the 

 waste water is stored in great 

 reservoirs and let out dur- 

 ing times of low water. 

 It is thus changed from 

 an agent of destruction to a 

 benefaction to every com- 

 munity in the valley. 



There is nothing new in 

 the idea of storing floods 

 and using their waters dur- 



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