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Chairman DONAHEY. You may be seated, and give your name and itle to the reporter.

Mr. WOODWARD. Sherman M. Woodward. My title, the title of my position with the Tennessee Valley Authority, is chief water control planning engineer.

QUALIFICATIONS OF WITNESS

I assume that the committee wants to know something of my professional record. I graduated from the engineering college of Washington University, in St. Louis, in 1893; I later spent 1 year in graduate work in scientific and engineering lines at Harvard. Ever since I have been engaged in teaching and practice of engineering, always along hydraulic lines.

I was a professor at the University of Arizona for 8 years, from 1896 until 1904.

I was with the Department of Agriculture, as irrigation engineer and drainage engineer, for a little over 3 years, from 1905 to 1908.

From 1908 I was connected with the faculty of the State University of Iowa, until I resigned to give full time to the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority. That resignation, I think, was in the summer of 1934.

During this long time when I was connected with the University of Iowa, I worked on a good many different projects as a consulting engineer, just temporary work, that is, part-time work. During that time I was employed by cities, counties, State organizations, private corporations, and individual engineers in various places.

At different times I worked in the States of Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, and Mississippi, and Ohio, because for 7 years I was on a half-time basis on the Miami conservancy flood protection district which covered the Miami Valley in Ohio. That particular engagement lasted from 1913 until 1920. I was consulting engineer for the Chicago Sanitary District, off and on, for 4 or 5 years, spent several months with them at different times, in all.

I was first employed by the Tennessee Valley Authority as a consultant and came here occasionally for a few days at a time. That continued throughout the first year of the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

I was employed by the Bureau of Standards of the Department of Commerce to help design the National Hydraulic Laboratory in this city, out at the Bureau of Standards. That covered 6 months or more, about the year 1930, and I used to come to Washington about every month for a few days during that time.

A great deal of my pieces of employment were relatively small, and I couldn't recall all of them without hunting up old records, because they were connected with small towns, and drainage districts, and highways, and all kinds of projects, and I don't think it is necessary to go into further detail.

I have published various Government reports and one or two small textbooks, but I have never been extensively in print.

I am a member of half a dozen engineering societies, including the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education. Those three are all large, well-known, national societies; and I belong to various smaller local engineering societies.

Chairman DONAHEY. You may proceed with your statement.

Mr. WOODWARD. I will try to make all of these statements brief, because I don't know what you want to know. I could give you a tremendous amount of detail but unless you particularly want itChairman DONAHEY. Have you got copies of your statement?

Mr. WOODWARD. No, sir; I am just talking from notes. I have notes on various subjects and various lines.

My duties with the Tennessee Valley Authority, as head of the what we call the water control planning department, cover general administrative supervision of the different divisions that Mr. Parker outlined quite thoroughly, and I think that he described their duties fairly well. In general, these cover collecting the hydraulic data and making the original preliminary plans and reports upon which the Board can take action in deciding where and when to start actual construction projects.

I also have had entrusted to me the responsibility for the operations of the control of water in reservoirs and in the river. There is a great variety to these duties, and I don't know whether I should go into them unless someone wants to ask about them.

AUTHORITY DAM SYSTEM RE FLOOD-CONTROL PROBLEMS

Now, if I may say a little about the general planning of the projects and the operation. As you know, the law says that navigation and flood control shall be the primary objects of the flood-control or river-control plan. All of the dams that have been planned for the main river have been located primarily for navigation reasons. Some of those dams are not good power dams, would never have been built by a power company for water power. In spite of that, though, after they are built for navigation and for some flood control, we have found that in every case, by relatively small expenditures, possible to develop power, and in our planning we make the preliminary plans for doing that.

The heights of the dams on the main river are settled primarily by the navigation requirements, but it is true that after settling the navigation levels that would be required, we have added on top storage space in every case for flood control, to that extent that we thought was economical. It is settled usually by the fact that after you reach a fairly definite height the expense begins to be tremendous, due to disturbance of existing utilities or institutions, that is, the railroads, highways, towns, and ownerships of the land, in a great number of ways. One can never say with certainty that you could just carry it exactly to a certain level, to a certain foot, you couldn't go higher or lower; that is, there is a tolerance there of a foot or two that is always a matter of opinion, because that kind of engineering work can't be settled with absolute precision, but we study it very carefully, and try to consider every factor, and then adopt these levels at what seems to us the most reasonable, considering the cost, and the benefits.

Now, we know that on the main river, we do not get sufficient storage space to completely control floods in the Tennessee River,

either for the benefit of the inhabitants along the Tennessee River, or for the greatest benefit to the lower Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and so right from the start we have contemplated that there must be a large amount of additional flood-control storage. Part of that is above the Norris Reservoir, a smaller amount will be in the Hiwassee Reservoir, but we have told the people of the Chattanooga from the first statements that I know of in the Tennessee Valley, that those two reservoirs did not provide sufficient flood-control storage for the protection of Chattanooga and that if they wanted to secure complete protection a lot more flood-control storage would be needed.

We haven't yet finished our studies of that question just because of lack of time and because we have been so busy building these dams and reservoirs on the main stream and Norris Reservoir, which was prescribed in the act, but we shall have, I think, within the next year or two, complete recommendations as to more reservoirs that are not included so far in our general plan.

VALUE OF FLOOD-CONTROL PROTECTION ON TENNESSEE AND MISSISSIPPI

RIVERS

Should I say more about the general planning? Shall I go into details about the value of flood-control protection on the Tennessee River and on the Mississippi River?

Mr. BIDDLE. Yes.

Mr. WOODWARD. We have finished during the last year a study for Chattanooga in which we come to the conclusion that the danger of the Chattanooga is such that either Chattanooga or the State of Tennessee or the United States Government could afford to spend, if necessary, $70,000,000 or $80,000,000 to make Chattanooga perfectly safe, that is, on a sort of insurance basis.

If the 1867 flood should be repeated, as Chattanooga is at present, we estimate that the damage would probably be from that one flood around $40,000,000. In 1867, Chattanooga had a population of about 5,000, and now it has a population of perhaps 125,000, and, of course, the conditions are tremendously different.

In making all of our plans for flood control, we assume that it is necessary to protect against a flood bigger than the biggest flood of record. That is just recognized good engineering, that we shouldn't base our plans on the biggest flood in the past of which we know, because it is common experience that flood records are being broken nearly every year, in one part of the country or in another. For example, in 1937, the flood on the lower Ohio was much higher than any of which we have any record or tradition, and that tradition goes back perhaps nearly 200 years.

Now, it is true that Cincinnati and above, up toward Pittsburgh, it was not the highest flood of record in 1937; they had another flood in 1936, but no one supposed that so high a flood could come on the lower Ohio as happened in 1937.

Now, that same sort of thing is happening every few years somewhere or other in the country, and the ones who have studied it a long time and I have for 30 or 40 years-I am perfectly convinced that the only safe way is to put a margin of safety on in addition to the biggest flood of past record.

Now, that is a matter of judgment which we approach from various angles, and finally agree on what we think is a reasonably safe margin.

In the case of Chattanooga, in this report that we have just finished up, and we are just presenting, we have told them that they ought to have safety against a flood 60 percent bigger than the 1867 flood, which happened nearly 75 years ago. In arriving at that figure, we consider all of the maximum flood records throughout the eastern part of the country, any place that seems comparable with Chattanooga, and we go to New England floods and Pennsylvania floods, and floods on the Potomac and upper Ohio, Pittsburgh, and by comparing all of those areas with the mountainous area above Chattanooga, we have come to this decision, if they want to be perfectly safe, they should have that much extra margin.

I don't think that that big a flood ever will come, but I don't know how close to it it may come and I feel perfectly sure in the course of time a flood bigger than 1867 will come. How much big. ger we can't say.

The same thing has happened on the Mississippi, following the 1927 flood, which in some respects seemed to have been the biggest that ever occurred on the Mississippi; a flood-control plan was devised, and a margin was added to the 1927 flood to base a plan on from Cairo down to the Gulf of Mexico.

The maximum flood supposed to be possible, or necessary to protect against, that time, was made, which was, if I am correctly informed, a flow of 2,250,000 cubic feet of water per second passing the city of Cairo, at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi.

Following the 1937 flood, which was a bigger flood than ever had been experienced at Cairo, the Chief of the Army Engineers made a report which is published as a House document, in which he says that now they have raised that maximum flood they ought to have protection against up to 2,600,000-that is an increase of 15 or 20 percent higher than the standard they adopted only 10 years earlier. The 1937 flood did not quite reach the amount that they had adopted as what they should protect against, but it was so close to it that you could hardly measure the difference.

Now they say that you should put on a margin higher and base their theoretical plans on this higher quantity, and they have published it, as I say, 15 or 20 percent bigger than they have published 10 years ago, in 1937.

Now, that is the common history of flood control, and we are trying to take advantage of that history and make what we regard as perfectly safe plans.

IMPORTANCE OF GILBERTSVILLE RESERVOIR

You have heard about our Gilbertsville Reservoir, which will be the largest flood control reservoir ever built in this part of the country. Of course, it isn't as large as the Boulder Reservoir which is also a flood-control reservoir to a considerable extent. We feel perfectly sure that the Gilbertsville Reservoir will be able to reduce the crest height of any flood from Paducah to Cairo, of 212-about 2% feet.

All the past records which we can try it out on by computations, it varies from in some cases up to 3 feet and from that down to 2. Besides the Gilbertsville Reservoir, the storage in all of the other reservoirs upstream will have some beneficial effect that can be added to the Gilbertsville Reservoir. They can't be controlled so easily. because they are further away, more spread out, but by reasonable

operation and I think perfectly easy operation, it would be possible to make the storage space in all of the reservoirs above us full to a large degree, and so we will increase the value of Gilbertsville Reservoir perhaps 50 percent more by the use of these reservoirs above to help out Gilbertsville Reservoir.

NAVIGATION

Another man is to talk to you more about navigation. Perhaps I shouldn't touch upon it, except that we have to consider it all of the time, and in the operations it is one of our active interests that requires lots of attention.

During the past 2 years, two passenger packet boats have been making excursions up the Tennessee River, the Golden Eagle from St. Louis has made 10 trips, I think it is, the last one only a week or two ago, and every one of those trips we have helped that boat by special attention; we have always received notice when it enters the river at Paducah and we keep track of its progress; we are informed when it passes various places and we have released water especially to take care of it below Pickwick Dam several times.

The other big boat, much bigger, the Gordon C. Green of Cincinnati, has made, I think, only one or two trips, so that it hasn't come as frequently, but we help it also.

One of the oil companies is transmitting now a tremendous amount of oil up to Guntersville and unloading it at lower points. They have run a towboat about every 2 weeks. Their system in general has been that they come in with their barges fully loaded, unload barges somewhat at Paducah and Johnsonville, at Perryville and Savannah. Those points are all below the Pickwick Dam and that lightens the draft so that they can, after going through the Pickwick lock, they can get up to Florence without any trouble.

Now, there has been a limit on depth in what we call the Florence Canal, a canal 3 miles long, just below Wilson Dam, and at the present time a contract is being executed to lower or cut out the rock in the bottom of that canal and increase the depth about 3 feet. That is being done by the Army engineers under a contract. That limits the draft at present up to Wilson Dam.

Then, these barges go through Wilson Dam and go on up the river, discharge part of their cargo at Sheffield and more at Decatur and finally stop at Guntersville.

If you remember, the town of Guntersville is about 10 miles above the dam and to reach that they have to go through the lock at the Guntersville Dam, which I presume you saw. That lock has been operating in a temporary condition because in order to let boats. through before the reservoir is filled, we have to have the gates at the upper end of the lock at a lower level than they are after the reservoir is filled, so we have temporary lock gates in there. Now, when the dam is finished, so that we can fill the reservoir, we have to take out those lock gates and put in what we call the upper miter sills, and install the gates on top of that. That means that for the time necessary to install a lot of concrete across the upper end of the lock, we can't have any boats pass through. The date for that operation has been set and published by the Army Engineers, and the printed notices have been distributed to everybody that on December 15 navigation will be cut off through the Guntersville lock, but we hope to have it open again about January 15. We can't