West Virginia (55).

Total counties (399).

Percent of Mississippi counties.

CASH INCOME REPORTED PER CAPITA AND MEDIAN FAMILY INCOME FOR PROPOSED MISSISSIPPI COUNTIES FOR THE APPALACHIAN REGION

TOMBIGBEE RIVER AND TRIBUTARIES-LOCAL PARTICIPATION IN
FLOOD CONTROL WORK

Local citizens have long sought flood control improvement on the upper Tombigbee River and its tributaries. In accordance with authorizing legislation, they will participate in the current improvement of 22 tributary streams in the following ways:

(a) Furnish without cost to the United States all lands, easements, and rights-of-way required for construction;

(b) Make all necessary road, highway, bridge, and utility changes and relocations;

(3) Hold and save the United States free from damages due to construction;

(d) Prevent encroachments in the improved channels;

(e) Maintain all works after completion in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Secretary of the Army; and,

(f) Contribute in cash or equivalent work the sum of $1,473,000.

The Tombigbee River Valley Water Management District, authorized by the Mississippi Legislature in 1962 and organized in 1963, has given assurances that it will meet all conditions of local cooperation for the work in Mississippi. There is at present no basin-wide organization to sponsor the work in Alabama, but the individual counties concerned can furnish the required cooperation.

The cash contributions which have been apportioned to each stream are shown in the table in this folder.

TOMBIGBEE RIVER TRIBUTARIES, MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA

Improvement of the tributaries will permit more intensive agricultural use of the 254,000 acres in the flood plain. It is estimated that the average annual benefit from the project will amount to about $2,564,000, $1,073,000 from damages prevented and $1,491,000 from better use of the land.

The scope and estimated cost of the work on each of the 22 tributary streams are given in the table in this folder. The overall improvement is expected to cost about $27,600,000.

Design, engineering and construction of the improvements are under the direction of the U.S. Army District Engineer at Mobile, Alabama. The first construction contract was awarded on March 30, 1965, for work on Big Browns Creek in Itawamba and Prentiss Counties, Mississippi. Construction will proceed on the other streams as funds are made available from Federal appropriations and local contributions.

Plans will be made for work to commence at the mouth and progress upstream on each tributary and group of related tributaries in order to maintain adequate outlets for the more rapid runoff through the improved channels.

Attachment No. 9

RURAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

"THE TUPELO PLAN"

Tupelo's plan of cooperation between businessmen and farmers has been copied throughout the South and portions of the plan have been adopted as the basis of the Department of Agriculture's program of rural development now being introduced from the 13-county district of Northeast Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico as the best approach yet found to the problem of rural development. Official representatives of the Phillippine government, after a tour of much of the United States, described the Tupelo Plan as "exactly the thing we have been looking for." It was described by the late Paul Chapman, Dean of the University of Georgia College of Agriculture, as the "most important, the most complete, the most successful rural program in this country."

The Tupelo Plan differs from most other programs in three respects. It is built around community effort rather than isolated individual effort. It emphasizes farm management rather than mere high production in unrelated farm enterprises, and it ranks high industrial productivity on a par with high farm productivity.

Under the Rural Community Development Council, heart of the Tupelo Plan, for example, in Lee and Itawamba Counties 17 white communities and 10 Negro communities are organized with a council of their own to direct their efforts at

community improvement. Each has monthly meetings where educational or recreational programs are presented; each develops its own projects of improvement.

Each community has a "partner" in town-either an entire civic club or a section of a civic club. These civic groups from towns of the Tupelo area meet with the rural councils each month, enjoy fellowships with them, and contribute financially toward improvement of the community projects and programs.

Tupelo businessmen, who contribute more than $93,000 a year for the operation of their Community Development Foundation, do not stop with organized activity. Many of them support individual projects to supplement the over-all program of the Rural Community Development Council.

Mr. JONES. Without objection, the letter directed to the chairman of the committee by Gov. Paul B. Johnson will be made a part of the record and printed in the record immediately following the statement of Mr. Pound.

(The letter follows:)

STATE OF MISSISSIPPI,
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,
Jackson, May 5, 1967.

Hon. GEORGE FALLON,

Chairman, Public Works Committee,

House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

MY DEAR CONGRESSMAN: I very much appreciate the opportunity to present information relative to the possible inclusion of an area of Northeastern Mississippi in the Appalachian Regional Development Program. We in Mississippi are greatly pleased that the United States Senate has seen fit to include in the Appalachian Regional Development Act, S. 602, an amendment providing for participation by 18 Mississippi counties in the Appalachian Regional Program. It is to your interest and decision on this question that my comments and the attached materials are directed.

I should like, repectfully, to submit to your committee a report to me relative to Mississippi's participation in the Appalachian program which was prepared by Mr. Thompson Pound, Executive Secretary, of the Tombigbee River Valley Water Management District, Tupelo, Mississippi, and was submitted to me originally on July 1, 1966.

I want to stress to the committee that we in Mississippi were originally attracted to the Appalachian program on its merits and that we intend to pursue our participation in the program on that basis over and above the fact that Northeastern Mississippi is clearly related by the nature of geography and economics to the contiguous southern portion of the Appalachian region.

The past history of developmental activity by the people of Northeastern Mississippi bears out a further relationship to the philosophy and working approach of the Appalachian program. The community and area development activities in and around Tupelo, Mississippi, has been a subject of international interest for a number of years. Repeated study and visitation by interested persons from many places have given what is called "The Tupelo Plan" a highly regarded reputation among students of economic and social development. Similarly, the comprehensive approach to area development in which the interest and involvement of local people is directly tied in with a broad approach to resource development follows the same philosophy and has attracted wide respect in the development field. Within our state government in Mississippi, we are carefully but aggressively pursuing the comprehensive area approach for all parts of our State. Through our state agencies and our Research and Development Center, as well as our universities and development organizations throughout the State, we are relating our public activities to those goals which are carefully designed to bring about increased citizen action as well as technical support for the creation of job opportunities, higher income and improved living conditions in our communities. The people in Mississippi are becoming increasingly involved in programs of this type and are increasingly successful in the contributions they are making to help themselves toward development objectives.

For these reasons, I am not surprised but I am greatly pleased that the interest in joining the Appalachian program came directly from the people through their area development leadership in Northeastern Mississippi.