18 DD HTEy ASU DSU; BLOND Bb Us Cr Gatelan: 
Conservation Service started out 
years ago with an excellent pro- 
gram of contour plowing and ter- 
racing and planting trees and cover 
crops and preserving wetlands, all 
on the sound principled ‘holding 
the raindrop where it falls.’ At a 
time when the taxpayers are pay- 
ing out more than $3 billion a year 
in crop subsidies, mainly to large 
farms, to keep land out of agri- 
culture, another branch of the 
Department of Agriculture, the 
Soil Conservation Service, is 
spending millions bringing new 
farmlands into _ production by 
straightening out the meandered 
streams into vast drainage ditches. 
All this is justified as preventing 
flood damage. But by _ rushing 
water rapidly downstream, chan- 
nelization frequently causes much 
worse floods downstream. The 
Minnesota Conservation Depart- 
ment blames Minnesota’s all-time 
record 1969 flood on the accelerat- 
ed run-off caused by over 70,000 
miles of ditches. 
“In the Starkweather watershed 
in North Dakota, the Alcovy in 
Georgia, the Little Auglaize in 
Ohio, and other beautiful streams 
from coast to coast, the Soil Con- 
servation Service is busy drain- 
ing wetlands and turning natural 
streams into canals. Trees along 
the banks are bulldozed down, and 
without roots, the soil erodes into 
the waterway. With their bottom 
habitat laid waste, fish die out. No 
longer can birds and small animals 
live along the denuded _ banks. 
Swamps are drained, and _ their 
habitat for wildlife, and _ their 
ability to clean pollutants from 
waters, is lost forever. Of Arkan- 
sas’ original ten million acres of 
wetland hardwoods, less than two 
million now remain. 
“The Audubon Society’s testi- 
mony at our hearings was most 
helpful. We shall try to restore 
some sanity and balance to our 
agriculture programs. Specifically, 
I intend to move, when the agri- 
cultural appropriations bill hits 
the House floor, to end this waste- 
ful and destructive channeliza- 
tion program. I’d like to channel 
the SCS back into something use- 
ful. Will you help? 
“Our  Subcommittee’s labors 
have ranged from the Everglades 
of Florida, to the paper mill-pol- 
luted streams of Maine, to the 
shrinking waters of San Francisco 
Bay. 
“But the environmental crisis 
is world-wide. As our Subcommit- 
tee pointed out in its preview of 
the environmental decade issued 
a year ago, the earth’s population 
is rising, but its resources are 
steadily falling. 
“Everywhere, man must learn 
to live in harmony with nature. 
“The contamination of Lake 
Baikal is equally as alarming as 
the contamination of Lake Erie. 
The coast of Cornwall needs pro- 
tection from the Torrey Canyon 
as much as the coasts of Santa 
Barbara need protection from 
Union Oil. We must stop man from 
making a desert of all the earth, 
as he has in days gone by made 
a desert of much of China and the 
Middle East. We must stop making 
the Earth a hothouse by overheat- 
ing the atmosphere with the fires 
of our fossil fuels. 
“The United Nations conference 
on the environment in Stockholm 
a year from now will give mankind 
one more chance to get right with 
nature. 
“And it is high time, lest it be 
said to us as it was to Jeremiah, 
‘And I brought you into a beauti- 
ful country, to eat the fruit there- 
of; and the goodness thereof; but 
when ye entered ye defiled my 
land, and made mine _ heritage 
an abomination.’ ”’ 
