Estimate of remainder of construction costs for close of war at 1944 prices. 1 Power plant construction halted by War Production Board. Dam under construc tion. 2 165,000 kilowatts to be installed. 3 Will provide power for irrigation pumping; 99,000 kilowatts to be installed. Augment power output at Grand Coulee by river regulation. Big Flat and North Side low-lift units. 1, 707, 614 1, 753, 290 922, 000 798, 500 596, 683, 000 6 Augment power output, Grand Coulee and Bonneville; 80,000 kilowatts to be installed. Does not include present installed capacity of 818,000 kilowatts. Units 16, 17, and Roza and Kennewick divisions. Kennewick unauthorized. 10 1,244,000 kilowatts to be installed. 11 Burbank may be included in Columbia Basin project. laneous. Stump Creek. TABLE E.-Hydroelectric power plants on Columbia River and tributaries APPENDIX B FORESTS IN THE ECONOMY OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN IA statement prepared by the Forest Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture for the use of the subcommittee of the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, House of Representatives, Hon. Compton I. White, chairman] SUMMARY The Columbia River Basin, comprising for this report the States of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and the portion of Montana west of the Continental Divide, is predominantly a rural territory. Small towns abound, and farm people account for 25 percent of the total population. It is an area rich in natural resources, the prudent development of which would perhaps support a population one-third greater than the present population. This area contains the largest reservoir of standing timber in the United States. One-half the saw timber and one-seventh of the commercial forest land in the United States is in the basin. The total stand of saw timber is 872,000,000,000 board feet. Upon this the Nation relies, and will continue to rely for 20 to 40 years, for a very large portion of its softwood lumber of high quality. In 1943 nearly 35 percent of the lumber produced in the United States came from the basin. The present timber cut is very largely from private lands, which are for the most part so operated as to liquidate quickly the investment in standing timber. Private ownership, generally speaking, includes the potentially most productive sites, and the most accessible timber. Over one-half of the acreage of commercial forest land is federally owned or managed. All of this, and a part of the State timber is handled on a perpetual-cut basis. The time will come, therefore, when the publicly owned forests will contribute proportionately more to the commercial cut of the area. In addition to timber products the forests of the region provide other important values to the local economy. Forest and other soil cover provide a measure of control of soil erosion. Some six or seven thousand ranch operators run cattle and sheep on forested ranges in the basin. These ranges give stock summer grass and forage which provides ranchers with their cheapest weight gains. Forest hunting and fishing is an important item to the local population. Of a million State hunting and fishing license holders in the basin it is estimated that approximately half pursued their favorite sport in forested areas. Recreational facilities in the form of camps, hotels, and "dude" ranches within the more accessible forest areas are, during wartime, filled to capacity. It is expected that forest areas will experience a moderate cabin and resort building boom as soon as materials are available after the war. The forest industries make a substantial contribution to the economy of the basin. They may be grouped into 3 general classifications: (1) Woods work or the harvesting of the timber; (2) mill work, or the manufacture of primary products; and (3) factory work or the remanufacture of primary wood products into consumers' goods. In the basin there are estimated to be about 130,000 employed in these 3 classifications of forest industries. Woods operations employ some 43,000; sawmilling, 50,000; pulp and paper, 14,000; veneer and plywood, 11,000; planing mills, 9,000. In 1939, the last year for which census data are available, 29 percent of the manufacturing establishments in the area were making products from wood. These industries employed 52 percent of the persons engaged in manufacture, produced 34 percent of the value of products, and accounted for 46 percent of the total value added by manufacture. The forest industries today undoubtedly contribute a relatively smaller part to the industrial life of the region than they did in 1939 for the war has greatly accelerated the growth of heavy industries. Their absolute contribution, on the other hand, has probably increased. The future of lumbering in the Columbia River Basin is not altogether bright. As at present constituted some decline in the lumber industry in this area seems inevitable. The plywood industry, which is largely based on Douglas fir, will probably decline also in the next two decades. The decline of both lumbering and plywood manufacture will result from a shortage of economically available timber of suitable size and quality. In the Douglas fir region the outlook is for a loss in production almost immediately following the war of about 1,000,000,000 board feet of saw logs and veneer logs. The pulp and paper industry as now constituted can probably be maintained at approximately its present level during the next two decades. A few mills may be constructed but in all probability they will in large part replace mills that have already been, or may be, closed because of competition for wood. In the light of this situation, a three-point program to maintain the present high contribution of raw timber material to the economic life of the basin is suggested: 1. Produce on the land maximum quantity of wood, forage, and other items suitable for conversion into usable products. This means for one thing the strengthening of public aids to private owners in the protection and management of their forest lands. Progress in this direction may be expected from recent enactment of Public Law 296, increasing from $2,500,000 to $9,000,000 the authorization for Federal assistance in forest-fire protection, and of Public Law 273, authorizing integrated sustained-yield management of national forest and interspersed or adjacent private lands. Additional authority is needed to expand technical assistance to private owners, to provide public credit especially adapted to needs of sustained-yield forest management, and to provide more adequately for protection against forest insects and disease. Also included in these aids is the strengthening of all phases of forest research. Emphasis should be given to forest-products research, and to pilot plants for commercial demonstration of new processes and products, as a basis for new outlets for nonmerchantable species and trees, and for the great volume of material which now goes to waste in woods and mill operations. Also needed, in the judgment of the Forest Service, is effective public regulation of cutting and other forest practices on private land adequate to stop forest destruction and deterioration and keep the lands reasonably productive. In order to keep all forest land reasonably productive the public should acquire such forest land as is not likely to be kept productive in private ownership. This includes lands that have been reduced to a nonproductive condition by erosion, fire, and misuse; other lands plainly submarginal for permanent private ownership; and lands essential for watershed or other public purposes. To remove certain local inequities incident to Federal ownership, the present method of financial contributions to local government on account of national forest lands should be improved. Included with the public aids to private owners should be a program of forest works for forest rehabilitation and development. This includes among other things forest planting; weeding, thinning, pruning, and other cultural work; firehazard reduction; and the construction and reconditioning of necessary physical improvements such as fire-lookout towers, forest roads and trails, landing fields, and telephone lines; control of injurious insects and disease; range reseeding; the expansion of facilities needed for recreation, watershed protection, and other forest uses; and for administration and research. 2. Reduce waste of wood material by the introduction of more effective harvesting methods, and of plants that can convert waste products into industrial raw materials. This phase of the program will result in establishment of new industries, employing materials now wasted by existing industries. The chemical conversion of waste products into such items as alcohol, plastics, animal foods, etc., offers great possibilities. 3. Increase local employment by the remanufacture of lumber, pulp, and other primary products of wood that are now being shipped from the region. This means that industries will take raw lumber and convert it into prefabricated homes, sash and mill work, toys, and a host of other products which are needed in the west coast economy, but under present practices are shipped from eastern manufacturing centers. GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE AREA: POPULATION AND ECONOMY For the purpose of this report, the Columbia River Basin includes the States of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and the portion of Montana lying west of the Continental Divide. Actually the basin includes small portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, and excludes the important Puget Sound area of Washington and a narrow strip of coastwise Oregon and Washington. The Columbia River Basin comprising approximately 10 percent of the land area of continental United States, and about 3 percent of the Ñation's population, is an area of great natural wealth. It possesses 41 percent of this country's |