Mr. Leighton. 
422 DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
With reference to the matters of cost, local obstruction of highways, 
communication, safety of dams, and overflow damages, the speaker 
will refer to his article above referred to.* The speaker will accept 
Colonel Chittenden’s estimate of cost, $500000000, and will still 
insist that the investment will be eminently wise: The author has 
made a distribution of expenditures covering the Mississippi and 
Ohio Rivers, including navigation and flood protection; but, with 
all this accomplished, still would we be wasting the flood-water which 
is so much needed; still would we have low water and foul streams, 
with unspeakable conditions on the Ohio, like those of the past summer 
and fall; still would we be obliged to provide for water-power, our 
sole hope as a source of energy in the future; still would we be wasting 
our precious and fast-disappearing supply of coal. Why is it that we 
refuse to take the long, broad, comprehensive view ahead, and provide 
manfully for all future contingencies and economic demands? Is the 
old, the narrow, the conventional road, the course of which traverses a 
circle, always to confine our steps? 
The final point of error on the part of Colonel Chittenden is. that 
of the speaker’s alleged estimate of returns to the Government by 
reason of additional water-power made possible by reservoir construc- 
tion. The fact that three good men have successively published com- 
ments thereon, under the assumption that the speaker has estimated 
a return of $20 per horse-power-year, leads him to believe that there 
must be some statement or turn of phrase in his report that warrants 
such an inference. He has been unable to find it, and refers those 
interested to his statement in Hngineering News above cited. Through- 
out his whole consideration of water-power, the speaker has used $20 
per horse-power-year merely as a factor to indicate approximately the 
value of the power, and not the Government rental. 
One more word, and that with reference to the author’s strictures 
concerning the speaker’s “reversal of obligation.” It is in testimony 
of Colonel Chittenden’s progressive attitude that he makes this 
stricture. He asserts that the reservoir principle is accepted, and that 
the cost is the only remaining bone of contention. Would that this 
were so! The principle is still widely doubted, in testimony of which 
the author should review recent utterances and writings of some of his 
brother officers. The existence of suitable reservoir sites in the 
Ohio basin is not accepted universally, in testimony of which see 
same utterances and writings of same parties. The original report, 
presented by the speaker to the Inland Waterways Commission, was 
designed to defend the principle and to announce the existence of 
reservoir sites, and, finally, to make a plea for a worthy examination 
which would include this matter of cost as well as all other uncertain 
items. ; 
* Engineering News, November 5th, 1908, 
