Mele mene een bpON- ak Uselats ic TN 27 
land is now in the federal 
acres program. Flood damages 
1e Illinois River, relievable by 
oject at Oakley, were found 
> exaggerated by about 2 to 1. 
creation accounted for more 
30 per cent of the supposed 
fits, so the Committee on Al- 
n pulled together statistics on 
sation in the vicinity of the 
ey project.Within 65 miles of 
proposed reservoir there is a 
dation of 1,051,343. In the same 
there are 26, 838 surface acres 
iblic lakes and only 3,505 acres 
iblic woodlands. Allerton Park, 
only large tract, represents 
third of this woodland acreage. 
ever, the Corps of Engineers 
red the aesthetic and scientific 
es that would be lost, using 
ad the standard commercial 
2 of bottom lands. 
most half of the recreation 
fit was to come from swim- 
¥ in the reservoir. Lake Deca- 
also a Sangamon River reser- 
, was intended for swimming 
However, Lake Decatur has 
1 closed for several years be- 
e of silt and algae-ridden and 
n polluted water. Oakley, with 
ow-flow augmentation feature, 
ld be particularly unattractive 
‘wimmers because during the 
summer months the average 
vdown would leave an exten- 
foul-odored mudflat through- 
the Allerton Park bottomlands. 
1e Committee on Allerton dis- 
red that the Corps’ revised and 
anded reservoir project would 
fided no additional water for 
atur. The original 621-foot con- 
ation pool included 11,000- 
-feet of water for Decatur and 
636-foot conservation pool al- 
lotted Decatur the same number 
of acre-feet. 
The Committee on Allerton also 
found that the Corps had over- 
stated the benefits from low-flow 
augmentation. When the Corps de- 
cided to include dilution augmen- 
tation as a purpose in the multi- 
purpose reservoir, they found it 
difficult to determine a_ benefit 
figure. Thus, they turned to the 
least-cost alternative concept. They 
calculated the cost of a single- 
purpose dam to hold the necessary 
dilution water and then claimed 
the cost of this fictitious dam as 
the benefit for dilution. — 
Thus the Corps calculated a $24 
million low-flow benefit figure— 
the cost of a single-purpose dam, 
and they determined that the cost 
of dilution as a part of a multi- 
purpose dam is about $10 million. 
In this way the Corps claimed a 
benefit-cost ration for dilution stor- 
age of 2.4 to 1. The Allerton Com- 
mittee engineers calculated the 
cost of advanced sewage treatment, 
which would negate the sewage 
dilution feature of the dam, at 
about $5 million. The Committee 
claims that sewage dilution is the 
real least cost alternative, and that 
the actual benefit-cost ratio is 
about .5 to 1. However, the Corps 
does not customarily accept non- 
dam alternatives, because dam 
building is their business. 
(3) The dam is not economically 
justified at more realistic interest 
rates. Congress recently set a new 
interest rate for computing costs 
on federally funded projects. Pro- 
jects authorized before January 1, 
1969, use the old 3 1/4 rate; those 
authorized after that date use the 
new 4 5/8 per cent interest rate, 
which is being raised. Despite the 
