FIGURE 2

Tabulation of 10-year moving averages of annual precipitation in the central Arkansas River basin

NOTE. The probability, based on 67 years of record and the 10-year moving average annual precipitation curve, is that increasing precipitation will occur from 1961 to 1971, following which a drought period of decreasing precipitation will occur from 1971 to 1981, possibly more severe than the 1929-39 or the 1951-61 droughts.

The long-range mean average for the basin is 29.88 inches.

Source: Prepared by Fred G. Fellows, consulting engineer, Ponca City, Okla.

FIGURE 3

Water yield, Arkansas and Walnut Rivers, Great Bend to Arkansas City, Kans.— Typical precipitation periods

Source: Discharge figures taken from USGS Water Supply Papers, prepared by Fred G. Fellows, consulting engineer, Ponca City, Okla.

1 Acre-feet X 0.01785-inches depth on 1 square mile.

Source: Prepared by Fred G. Fellows, consulting engineer, Ponca City, Okla.

Source: Data taken from "Arkansas, White, and Red River Basins Report" except Kaw Dam and Reservoir data which is from report prepared by Fred G. Fellows, consulting engineer, Ponca City, Okla.

SUGGESTED STUDY AND DEVELOPMENT

The changing runoff conditions in the central Arkansas Basin warrant intensive study and research since this great water resource can be the greatest single asset in the future development of south central Kansas and north central Oklahoma.

Present underground water supplies in the valley are inadequate for future growth and dependence in the future must be placed on surface water supplies. Numerous towns and cities even with existing populations could not go through another drought without suffering severe economic loss.

Steady progress is being made in reducing pollution and improving the quality of water, but faster progress is needed.

Limited progress is being made in the planning of reservoirs for the storage of municipal, industrial, and irrigation water supplies. Figure 5 shows the presently proposed reservoirs which have been or are now being investigated by the Corps of Engineers in the basin above Keystone Reservoir with the exception of one at Akron, Kans., for which no data is available.

The Keystone Dam, shown at the bottom of the sheet, is authorized and under construction. The Keystone Reservoir when built will never contain some of the future floods which will occur, unless other supplementary storage upstream including Kaw Dam and Reservoir is provided.

MEMORANDUM-MARCH 1, 1960

The preceding analysis of the central Arkansas River Basin is of special significance to the proposed Kaw Dam and Reservoir for the following reasons: (a) Kaw Dam and Reservoir should be built and completed prior to 1970 in order that it can be filled in one of the lush water years prior to the beginning of the drought which will surely occur in the early 1970's.

(b) As time goes on, more and more water wells are being drilled in the Arkansas Basin and the increased production of water from these sources is steadily depleting the stream during drought periods and it is estimated by 1970 under drought conditions the stream can be depleted to a point where it will not provide necessary replenishment of the underground water to the well systems. (c) In 1951 the combined Arkansas and Walnut Rivers poured 5,063,000 acre-feet across the Kansas-Oklahoma line into the headwaters of the Kaw Reservoir site. The combined flow of the Arkansas and Cimmaron at Keystone was approximately 11,201,000 acre-feet or nine times the flood control capacity of Keystone Reservoir which if it had been built at that time would have contained only a very small portion of the floodwaters which inundated large sections of Tulsa.

(d) As the fuller use of water mounts in the basin there will be a tightening of restrictions on the acquisition of the right to the river waters. Failure to act in time might result in irreparable loss to Oklahoma of water for domestic, industrial, agricultural, and power purposes.

CONWAY, ARK., April 21, 1960.

Mr. THEODORE M. SCHAD,

Staff Director, Select Senate Committee on National Water Resources,
New Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. SCHAD: I am enclosing copy of a paper titled "Stream Values, Recreational Use, and Preservation" which was presented at the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Dallas, Tex. This report is based on a nationwide survey and reviews the attitudes expressed by conservation agencies throughout the United States relative to the need for and importance of preservation of natural streams.

Since your committee is concerned with all aspects of water problems, I believe the information and expression of attitudes included in this report should be brought to the attention of the Water Resources Committee.

Yours truly,

HAROLD E. ALEXANDER,

Conservation Chairman, Audubon Society, Representing Nature Conservancy. STATEMENT BY HAROLD E. ALEXANDER, ARKANSAS GAME AND FISH COMMISSION, LITTLE ROCK, ARK.

The theme of this conference, "Resources and Citizenship," is particularly applicable to the purposes of this discussion, for nowhere in the maze of resource management is there more confusion and less recognition of the great variety of the problems which confront us than in the field of water management. The impact of technological development, both directly and as a result, has altered and changed the rivers, streams, marshes, and swamps which were

our geographic heritage; and these changes accelerate as human numbers soar and as more powerful machines and an expanded technology implement the further alteration of our environment. Even the vast oceans have felt the impact of man's energy, his technology and of the conflicts which result from his efforts to satisfy his insatiable desires.

Our rivers, which are the arteries of our land, have served as sources of supply for the water we require for our domestic and industrial uses, and as conveyors to carry away the debris from our homes and factories. It has been estimated that 50 million pounds of sewage solids are dumped, each day, into our flowing waters (Toffler, 1960). Synthetic compounds, poisons, and atomic wastes have further polluted our rivers, to eventually turn up in our drinking water, since we have not found ways to remove these substances dangerous to our existence.

Vast dams, built by designated Federal agencies, have been constructed across a majority of our river valleys, to hold water for irrigation, power production, flood control, or other purposes deemed necessary to our economic objectives. The economic justification for construction of some of these structures must be questioned when we note that estimated costs of irrigated lands run as high as $10,000 per acre (Carhart, 1951), that we have stored crop surpluses evaluated at $9 billion, and when we have placed over 22 million acres in the soil bank to take that land out of production.

In the lowlands, ditches built by the same or other agencies are gouging out and changing the character of natural streams, draining wetlands essential to the perpetuation of wildlife resources, and having profound effects on underground waters. The effects of subsidy payments, alone, has resulted in the drainage of hundreds of thousands of prairie potholes essential for breeding ground for ducks and geese.

At stream sources, in the uplands, other agencies are in the process of applying their own particular formulas of water management, specified by the limitations of their authorities.

Thirty-three Government agencies, each operating within the realm of limited objectives and authority, are concerned with the management and manipulation of water (Miller, 1958). In many areas these water management objectives overlap. In others, they totally ignore values or uses which are of great importance in terms of present and future needs.

It has been estimated that completed and planned major water projects will cost us $70 billion (Miller, 1958), which adds up to a staggering tax burden for the people of this country. Occasionally, somebody suggests that (maybe) some of our water problems are due to too much management, and he is, forthwith, "relegated to that group of outcasts which live outside the fringe of reasonable society."

But the cost problems, eminating from these vast management plans, are not, at this time, our particular concern. We'll leave these financial considerations to "the economist and Congress, who (we hope), will somehow dig us out of the debts under which we stagger and let us keep enough of our incomes to pay the rent, the grocer, and the dentist" (Alexander, 1959). As biologist and citizens, we are concerned with the impact of these vast programs for water management on all our resources. In this discussion we are particularly concerned with those intangible values which contribute to the scope and quality of the environment in which we live. We feel that the consideration of these values is essential to our future welfare and the perpetuation of our democratic society.

STREAMS AND VALUES

We have briefly considered some of the problems which result from our management of water; some of which management has been premised on questionable objectives which drive us to achieve an apparently higher standard of living. In the course of striving toward these objectives, we have ignored many of the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs essential to our existence. We wish, hereafter, to confine this discussion to the problems which have arisen in our "management" of streams. These problems are crucial and demand our concerted and immediate attention; since the stream developments that have been effected, or are in the planning stage, will impose drastic alterations on most of our rivers, changing their character and nature and destroying many values which we believe are worthy of preservation.