promise it because a big flood would prevent the work going on, but we feel pretty sure that by February that lock will be open. This oil company, of course, then had its delivery of gasoline cut off, so that they appealed to us, could we help them get extra loads up before that, and now they are sending up extra tows with extra depths, and ask us if we could give them full depth, and told us what draft they had up to 7/2 feet.

I have here a copy of a lot of telegrams and correspondence dealing with that, and if you want to go into that, and perhaps Mr. Alldredge will go more into it.

We have discussed all possible plans and worked with them in every way, and every time that one of those tows now is coming up to Pickwick lock we increase the flow from 18,000 to about 25,000 so as to help them get through the rapids below the lock; there is a bad shoal through Rock Cut, called Big Ben Shoals, which is 7 or 8 miles below the Pickwick lock. That is 18,000 cubic feet per second is the steady flow that we have maintained at Pickwick all the time, and we don't have water enough so that we could maintain 25,000 but we can for a few hours that it is necessary, when we know that they are there.

Of course we have helped lots of small-a great many navigation interests-I will just tell you what kind they are, if I can recall them.

There is a boat-building yard at Decatur, on the Wheeler pool, that builds barges and small towboats, and repairs barges of all kinds. They have what they call marine ways on the river bank. long sliding rails that go down to the river, and in order to get a large boat out to their ways, and to get it back into the water again after they are ready to repair it they have to have certain water levels in the Wheeler pool and we have raised that pool and lowered that pool at their request quite a number of times. Often it is quite difficult because it takes so much water to raise the whole pool 2 or 3 feet and they notify us sometimes a month or two months ahead of the dates when they expect to launch and we have to plan that far ahead in the summer to get the water to raise the water level. We have had boats working around different places in Decatur, dredging, we have had to adjust the water level for them, and sometimes they get stuck in the mud and sometimes they need lower water so as to work more advantageously, and we have helped boats unload, and load in that way and we have lowered the water in Wheeler to help the Army Engineers to build a retainer wall along the lock on one side that they wanted to use, and there has been a big bridge contract going on all this summer at Florence, a new bridge across the river, has a number of piers in the river, and long earth fills on the side, and they have been much threatened and some damage done by this summer's flood waters, and we controlled those for them a great deal and helped them get through.

Our own work, of course, we help at all of the dams where construction work is going on, by trying to smooth out the flow, with some drainage work being done on the side of the Wheeler Reservoir that we are paying for, being done by private contract, and we have manipulated the water levels to help that dredge contractor get his work done.

We have had boats get stuck on the rocks, in various places, and we have had to get them off by giving them extra water, and a lot

of these very interesting incidents to us, but I don't know that you want to be bothered with them. We have done some rather remarkable things; one boat that got on the rocks near Chattanooga, we sent a good-sized flood down from the Norris Dam, discharged 25,000 cubic feet a second, which pretty near filled the Clinch River up to flood level, but we got the boat off and saved the man his boat. He appealed to us in great distress, and it was rather interesting that we could dispatch a flood 200 miles, and it took nearly a week. We got the notice Monday morning over the telephone, the first call, to find out how much water it would take, and make plans, and it took us nearly a day, we had to consult so many people, and we did, though, get the water started at 8 o'clock Monday evening. That big a flood had to be released slowly, and we were 30 hours going up to the maximum amount, and we held the discharge uniform for 16 hours, and that was on Wednesday, and then we began shutting down, and we shut down slowly and spread that over 48 hours. We had told him that the crest would reach Chattanooga probably Friday morning, but that by Thursday evening he ought to see it very definitely, that he was getting a lot of water, and we had shut the water off at Norris on Wednesday.

He lightened his barge by removing all of the coal, it was a tow boat, and removing some of his equipment, and things he had on it just to make it as light as possible and he had two dredge boats there, I think, to hold it and pull it, it was in danger of breaking in two. The water had gone down and was likely to almost destroy his boat, and he pulled it off of the rocks about dark Thursday night and the water did rise another 6 inches and a foot, and was highest just about as we had predicted on Friday morning.

That was almost unprecedented operation so far as I know. He had asked for 6 inches more of water than he needed, and we wanted to be sure we wouldn't discharge all of this thing and fail, so we added about 6 inches, and as a matter of fact, the water did go about a foot higher after he pulled his boat off, but we were worried about how closely we could predict that flow of water and it checked very closely what we expected, and I think it was a very satisfactory demonstration.

It took about 100,000 acre-feet of water out of the Norris Reservoir. It was in February, as I remember, when we were filling the reservoir, and it lowered Norris Reservoir, I think, about 4 feet, but if we hadn't had fair flow coming in during that time it would have lowered it about 5 feet and some people asked questions about that, if we weren't throwing away a lot of valuable water, and well, if we could have sold that water as electric power it would have been worth 10 or 15 thousand dollars, I don't know, as a matter of fact, we couldn't sell it, and it wasn't wasted, but I tell you those figures just to give you the idea of the magnitude of the operation.

SUMMER FLOODS STOPPED BELOW NORRIS DAM

There are many farmers along the Clinch River, and along the Tennessee River, who farm land that is a very precarious situation, because it is so frequently flooded and the crops are ruined. About every 1 year out of 2, or 1 year out of 3, we get a flood sometime during the summer big enough to overflow the bottom land. In certain cases, that flood has come as late as September, and the corn

crop-corn is the only thing they raise on those lowest lands, has been destroyed by actually being washed away and ruined by the mud and water.

Now, below Norris Dam we have absolutely stopped those summer floods, and the farmers are farming down lower than they ever were able to before, and getting a decided benefit, but we have offsetting conditions.

Many of these farmers are farming land on islands in the river, which are separated by channels, rocky channels, and their practice is to go out to those islands during the summer, just fording, up to 2 feet deep.

If the river is perfectly dry, as is the natural condition during part of the summer, that is perfectly easy, but we are releasing now from about the first of July to all summer, some water for regulating the river down below, and it doesn't go as low as it did before, we compensate by taking the summer floods and distributing them out and spreading them over, so they have appealed to us various times to help them get stuff off the islands.

In one case a man said that he had over 20 head of cattle, they had eaten all of the hay and feed there was on the island, and if they couldn't get them off in 4 days they would starve, and he said that they couldn't feed them, and if they couldn't get them off in 4 days they would starve. He said that they couldn't swim; that they couldn't swim in the ice cold water that comes out of the Norris Reservoir; so he lived just a few miles below the dam, and we agreed on an afternoon that we would shut down the Norris Dam pretty nearly completely, for 2 or 3 hours, and he got his stock off, and then we released the water again, and everybody was happy.

We haven't always been able to help them as much as we would like, because those requests, financially they are small items, and sometimes incompatible with our needs, and we have told them that we can't guarantee any such careful looking after them, but we are very good friends of a lot of farmers, because we have been able to do little things like that for them.

This summer we did the same thing for the farmers below Pickwick. We had a summer flood that came perhaps at the end of July, I think, or the first part of August, and the natural flood at Pickwick would have been 133,000 cubic feet per second, and that would have covered at least 1,000 acres of corn land between Pickwick and the mouth of the river. We were able to reduce that crest of that flood, and keep several hundred acres from being covered at all, and the other parts were covered to a shallow degree.

To show how things work out, some of those farmers complain bitterly that we had caused that flood and hurt their corn, and we are blamed for everything. As a matter of fact, it was a very heavy rain down there, and we reduced that flood instead of making it, and we helped them, but they didn't know that. They see the water coming down, and they always think that somebody is letting out the water at Pickwick.

We try to keep them informed, but that is just a situation or a sample of how operations and public relations go.

POWER

I haven't said much about power, and I suppose that I am expected to say something about the power. Now, as a result of our regula

tion of the flow, there is a fairly steady stream even through the low water part of the year, and so far as it seems profitable or economical we have planned all of these projects to utilize that water power.

That, of course, is relatively a small part of the water that you can actually have flow down the river. The natural river has in its lower part, say at Florence, Ala., 50 or 100 times as much flow at the peak of a big flood, as it has at the lowest flow time in the year. If we go up toward the upper end of the river, like the Clinch river, then the variation is more. On the Clinch River, the maximum flood flow is at least 100 or 200 times or more what the minimum flow is in the summer. The part of the water that we have assumed could be used for power is relatively a small fraction of the total flow. But the regulation of the river does very much improve its possibility of use for water power, because we smooth out the flow, and we make the minimum flow a greater amount.

In our operations, we have never operated anything very much for power. There have been a few times at which some little operation has been made to help something about the power plants. I think that they have been made in connection with the acceptance tests of the machinery. Under the contracts, certain tests have to be made of the power-plant equipment, and those require in the specifications certain heads and certain quantities to be held steady for, say, a period of a day or something, and we have made special regulation to keep those steady conditions, and the quantities necessary for the acceptance tests.

I don't remember that we have done anything else, particularly for power. The water was used for power as it goes past the dams. I think that I am through with my first direct statement.

FLOOD-CONTROL OPERATIONS

I am reminded that I haven't described the machinery of our flood control or river-control operation, and how we utilize or obtain the knowledge necessary. We have a small staff, and well there are 8 to 10 people in all, most of whose time is given to collecting data daily, and using it and preparing it and disseminating it, and putting it to use in our water control operations.

We receive every morning by telephone or telegraph, the reports, the daily reports of rainfall and stream flow from about 50 places, if I remember it. All of our construction camps, of course, report daily, they report usually two or three times a day. If there is any rainfall they will tell what it is, and they tell the flow in the river on the river gages, and then we have other people up the valley and other places that report the same way the rainfall and the gaging stages on the river.

We compile all of that into a report, the most part of it into a daily bulletin. We distribute about 200 copies of that to our staff and to the public that wants it, and they are posted on all of the bulletin boards, a chart something like a weather bureau map that is put up in the post offices and everywhere and other places. It gives the rainfall, and the stage of the river at all of the different stations.

On the second page, we print predictions for 3 days, the 3 following days of what we think that the flow in the river will be at all of the important points.

That is issued daily, distributed daily, and I can give you copies if you want. We have got a stack of copies here, it is just a sample, and that is a daily routine.

As a part of that, after we collected the information, and make these predictions, then as a result of that, we issue whatever instructions that we need to issue as to the changing of the gates at any of the dams. Those are issued in the form of what is called "water control memorandum." They are issued not daily, but whenever necesary.

In the fiscal year ending last June 30, we issued if I remember rightly, about 65 of those. On some occasions we went 2 or 3 weeks without issuing any when conditions were steady, and we have issued I think in 1 day sometimes more than one, where they referred to different matters.

We can give all of the committee a copy of this, if they want, this is already in the book that they have. In that exhibit that Mr. Parker submitted, one of these is put in the back. It is the Water Control Memorandum No. 54, and dated May 21.

That is about a page of reading matter, which explains the conditions briefly, and then tells certain changes to be made, why they are made, it is self-explanatory, and it is distributed, we distribute about 30 copies to all of our staff that is in any way concerned. The list of the people who receive it is printed at the bottom of the bulletin, so that we know where every bulletin went, as each one is issued.

That is a fair example. Mr. Bowden, whose name is signed to it as recommending this, is my assistant who devotes almost all of his time to this work, and after he prepares the text and I consider it as much as necessary, I sign it.

We have such tremendous quantities of files and reports, that I don't know how much to tell you. I don't like to burden you with too much. Do you think that I have said enough of my operation! Mr. BIDDLE. You say whatever you think, Mr. Woodward. I don't think that you have described the flood operation very well yet, but I am allowed to ask questions later, and I will then go into that.

Mr. WOODWARD. There is one point that I intended to mention, as to the general annual scheme for operating the reservoirs. All of the reservoirs will be operated on a somewhat similar annual plan. But the tributary reservoirs like Norris have some differences from the main river reservoirs, and perhaps I ought to explain that a little.

If I take Norris Reservoir as an example, it will be drawn down during the last half of the calendar year, from the 1st of July until December, to a very low point, and that will always be done, because during that dry season is when the water is most useful, and it will be drawn out to keep the flow up in the lower part of the river, and in that operation it will be useful for power.

So that in December or the 1st of January, we shall have the reservoir down to a low level, which won't be exactly identical with different years, but probably will very seldom be less than 955, and not higher than an elevation of 965.

When the wet winter season, the flood season, comes on which lasts from about the 1st of January, until the last of March, as that season progresses, we shall fill up the reservoir somewhat. But by the end of March we shall try to have it up to about an elevation of 1,000. If it happens to be a very dry year, we probably will not have it filled that much, and if we take the driest years in the past, that we have