10 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



MEETING OF THE AMERICAN RECLAMATION FEDERATION 



Marshall O. Leighton of the United States Geological Survey Spoke on the Subject of "River Regula- 

 tion and Flood Control." 



The American Reclamation Federation held its 

 first meeting this fall on Monday, October 28th, at 

 the La Salle Hotel, Chicago, with President Perkins 

 in the chair. 



The principal speaker at this meeting was Mar- 

 shall O. Leighton, of the United States Geological 

 Survey, Washington, D. C., who addressed the mem- 

 bers on the subject of "River Regulation and Flood 

 Control." 



After Mr. Leighton's address President Perkins 

 invited the members to ask questions and an informal 

 discussion followed. Many interesting points were 

 brought out during this discussion and we feel sure 

 that our readers will find the proceedings instructive. 



Mr. Leighton spoke as follows : 



Ideas in many cases in regard to river control are 

 largely based on local points of view. It is only now 

 and then that we encounter an opinion or a set of 

 ideas that are broad enough to encompass the entire 

 question. In fact, it is rather bewildering to go about 

 the country and listen to the methods the account of 

 methods regulating rivers and preventing floods. 



We have a great many problems in connection 

 with this whole subject. There is probably no ques- 

 tion of immediate public importance so perplexing 

 and which involves so many local conditions and local 

 interests, all of which must be conserved. I will 

 discuss the question from the standpoint of the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley, for that after all is the greatest prob- 

 lem. We have in the lower valley a great stretch 

 of delta country periodically overflowed. Moreover, 

 it is one of the most fertile pieces of land on earth. 

 Now the people of that valley appreciate the im- 

 portance of a few things. One of them is flood pre- 

 vention. Another is swamp land drainage and third 

 is navigation. Naturally, they want to see thpir 

 ideas consummated as soon as possible and as a rule 

 they look at the problem from only the one stand- 

 point, that is of levees. They want the floods kept 

 off of the delta and to keep their lands in an agricul- 

 tural condition. Now, that is a very laudible ambi- 

 tion on their part. People in the Ohio valley, on the 

 other hand, have in mind the navigation, flood pre- 

 vention and water power, and in order to carry out 

 their water power ideas they are generally agreed 

 upon a plan of flood conservation, reservoir installa- 

 tions, whereby the power privileges in that valley, 

 which they now have, may be made productive of a 

 great amount of energy through the release of stored 

 water in these reservoirs during the dry period. In 

 the west part of the valley we have the great Mis- 

 souri and in the upper part of that valley, and in 

 fact, well down through its lower reaches, we have 

 people who are interested in irrigation and they, too, 

 are looking for stored water or as much stored water 

 as they can get. Now, suppose a man was running 

 an industrial establishment, a manufacture, or any- 

 thing of that kind, and he decided that his business 

 required the development of one department to the 



exclusion of every other, I think we will agree that 

 that would not be a wise business development, and 

 I do not think we would find any business man who 

 would advocate such an idea. I think we may apply- 

 that directly to our river regulation and flood pre- 

 vention propaganda, because the Mississippi river and 

 its tributaries constitute today the biggest industrial 

 plant on the face of the earth ; there is no getting away 

 from that at all, and there never will be an industrial 

 combination that represents so many values, so many 

 possibilities and such an enormous amount of invested 

 capital and development prospects as does the Missis- 

 sippi river system. Now, when you find people on 

 the lower river or on the Ohio river advocating the 

 development that immediately meets their needs they 

 are placing themselves in exactly the same position 

 as would the factory owner in developing one de- 

 partment to the exclusion of every other. 



Our three most prominent political parties have 

 declared that this river regulation problem is a na- 

 tional one and being a national one it cannot be de- 

 veloped in one part to the detriment of the other 

 that there must be harmony and unity and an undeviat- 

 ing thickness of all things. As it is a national ques- 

 tion and so recognized it must be handled nationally. 

 The people in the lower valley want levees and that 

 is a very commendable want on their part, but I 

 think that we should stop to consider that levees are 

 designed to waste water to get it to the ocean in the 

 shortest possible space of time. Now, a flood above 

 all things is a waste of water. The damage caused by 

 floods is a bagatelle compared with the loss of value 

 of the water a loss of value in the water by reason 

 of its running away to the sea quickly. With that 

 water back upon the upper streams those streams will 

 have a very much higher value. The people in the 

 Ohio valley are considering water power very largely. 

 They do not say much about it, but I find that when 

 they talk about their flood prevention reservoirs they 

 have the great water power idea in mind ; and the 

 same way with the people on the western side of the 

 great Mississippi valley. Now, there is no one that 

 I know of or no one that I have heard of that can 

 outline a feasible system of river regulation and flood 

 prevention for the Mississippi, and the reason is that 

 they have not the facts necessary to touch an out- 

 line. I may believe one thing I do firmly believe in 

 one line of work, yet I am quite ready to confess, 

 after a considerable amount of study, that I may be 

 wrong. You know that before we can use the Eng- 

 lish language we must learn the alphabet ; that in 

 our attempt to regulate the Mississippi we are in a 

 position entirely equivalent to that of a man who is 

 trying to write without learning the alphabet first. It 

 is amazing to find that in all this century that has 

 passed, in all the time that our engineers have been 

 at work on the rivers, but few fundamental facts 

 necessary to an intelligent development of that river 

 are at hand. We do not know anything about the 



