projects constructed by them that the Bureau of Reclamation had for a long time on reclamation projects. Now, you would be in favor then of making these small watershed development projects comparable in that respect to what has been previously.

Senator ALLOTT. To the principle of the bill we adopted last year,

yes.

Senator KERR. Now, another one of the elements of this legislation which will be subject to a good deal of discussion is identical in principal with the general flood-control law, and that is that this legislation would require the Federal Government to pay the entire cost of the flood control portion of the structure. Does that meet with your approval?

Senator ALLOTT. I will have to say that I have some very serious reservations on the flood control features, on having the Federal Government pay all of the flood control features of the bill.

Senator KERR. Who should pay them in your judgment?

Senator ALLOTT. It seems to me that the people who are involved should at the very least pay the bulk of those. I look at those, sir, in more or less the same light that one would look at a special improvement district.

ect.

Senator KERR. Well, now, you supported the Upper Colorado proj

Senator ALLOTT. Yes.

Senator KERR. The Federal Government would pay all of the flood control portion of that cost without reimbursement.

Senator ALLOTT. I believe they will, yes.

Senator KERR. Now, do you favor a different principle with reference to this project?

Senator ALLOTT. Well, Mr. Chairman, let me express this to you this way: I am not certain that is not a differentiation between a project of such great magnitude for example as the Upper Colorado River project. The payment of the flood control features by the Federal Government is a long, long recognized principle. I recognize that. I have never been certain in my own mind that it is completely justified. Senator KERR. Let me say this to you

Senator ALLOTT. I can say this-may I complete this thought? Senator KERR. Sure.

Senator ALLOTT. That as far as the people in Colorado are concerned, while there are some who would like to have the flood control features completely borne by the Federal Government, the great portion of the people in Colorado are willing to undertake these projects upon the basis of simply being able to finance them and reimburse the Federal Government for them.

Senator KERR. What I started to say was that I favor and will do all I can to get a bill out of this committee which will include a provision whereby the Federal Government will follow the same principle in these reservoirs that it has traditionally followed in its entire history of flood control. And that is that the flood control portion of the cost be paid by the Federal Government.

I cannot reconcile in my own thinking a situation whereby a lot of people would get the benefits of a flood control project paid a hundred percent by the Federal Government so long as it was in one project, and then have another program coming along whereby a lot of people would get a similar benefit but have to pay for it

because there were not very many of them benefited by any single element of the program.

Senator ALLOTT. You have put your finger on the crux of the matter. The thing about which I do not feel qualified to testify is what the financial effects, ultimate financial effects, would be if we immediately got a widespread use of public works all over the country about which the Government was going to assume the complete financial responsibility. That is the matter that concerns me in this, and I think most of our people interested in this bill are also concerned with the same thing.

Senator CASE. Mr. Chairman, you spoke about what the Federal Government had done during the entire history of flood control legislation. Now, my memory is not perfect, and I have not looked this up, but it runs in my mind that in 1927 when I think the Federal Government went into the flood control business that at that time there was a definite requirement that the local community should furnish the rights-of-way and provide certain other local contributions.

Senator KERR. Now, that requirement is in this bill.

Senator CASE. But at the time that I first drove to Washington, when I was first elected to Congress, I came through Ohio, and I ate in a restaurant where the water had been up almost to the ceiling in that restaurant, and then I came on down here and I heard debates about the inability of those Ohio communities to furnish as much in the way of local contributions as had been required.

I recall a debate in the House of Representatives in which Tom Jenkins, still a Congressman from Ohio and one of the veterans, spoke of these Ohio communities who had gone bankrupt trying to meet these flood problems. And he was arguing for the position which the Congress did write in, I think, in perhaps it was the act of 1938, that the Federal Government would go further in providing these rightsof-way on the theory that the benefits extended farther downstream, and you could not have the project for the benefit of maybe a hundred miles downstream if you required every community all along the line to provide rigidly all the costs of rights-of-way and things of that sort.

So I think the Flood Control Act of about 1938 liberalized the position of the Federal Government in that respect.

Now, I believe that it is still the policy of the Corps of Engineers to ask for local contributions in the way of rights-of-way, rehabilitation of highways, roads, streets and bridges, and things like that when it sees that that is important to make a project feasible and when it seems to be a fair thing to do. I think they do that as a matter of discretion.

But I agree with the chairman that to the extent that the flood-control features are similar to the flood-control features for which the Federal Government pays in the larger projects, the Federal Government ought to make a contribution on the smaller projects.

I think a line, however, might be drawn where the benefits are particularly assessable and applicable to a single or a huge beneficiary or they can be directly assessable that some judgment and discretion should be applied.

Senator ALLOTT. Mr. Chairman, on that subject, I was trying to draw this line here. I am thinking particularly in terms of where

the so-called flood benefits are essentially benefits to one, two, or a few people or a small area. Now, I can think in my own State of many such instances. In other words, are you going to go-I do not mean you personally-but are we going to think in terms of this so that the Government is going to finance one or more dams on everyone's land, all of which are flood control or may be properly termed "flood control," and would that obligate the Government to undertake such a program not once but maybe many times on the lands of a single individual?

In other words, I want to point up what the Senator from South Dakota was hinting at, which in my opinion presents a very serious problem. I can

Senator KERR. I recognize that it is a very serious problem.
Senator HRUSKA. Mr. Chairman-

Senator KERR. Yes, Senator Hruska.

Senator HRUSKA. May I ask the Senator from Colorado if we presuppose a situation where the construction of one of these dams would benefit one landowner as distinguished from a general benefit distributed throughout the countryside, would not that present a much different situation than some of the situations we have in the construction of these dams where many landowners may be distantly removed but would be benefited from the construction of that damn? Senator ALLOTT. Well, I think so. It really is not true that it would ever benefit just one landowner.

Senator HRUSKA. I understand, but if we accept that hypothesis. Senator ALLOTT. If you accept that, I think your situation would be true. Because actually what may happen is that you may have an area which receives heavy rains-gully-washers, as we call them out in the West-and maybe you will have only 4 or 5 landowners there who are affected by it. It may do great damage within that area, not just this year but next year. And you may see the effects of that erosion on every hand. However, by the time it leaves that area it may have reached the reaches of streams which are then capable and able to handle it without having any flood damage actually to anyone below that.

Senator HRUSKA. Now, if that hypothetical situation which I gave could be envisioned, would there not be somewhere between there and the upper Colorado storage project a vast range which would encompass situations where benefits could be computed as being conferred within a relatively small area and therefore the cost of the construction of the project could be equitably charged to that relatively small number of people? That situation would be different from large dams which would be of general benefit to the entire countryside extending maybe hundreds of miles; is that not true?

Senator ALLOTT. I do not think there is any question about that. I can think of one area that in my own mind-I went over it last summer, and it affects possibly 30 or 40 families. And I believe it is controlled below that. Now, there you have a limited matter. I can think of other particular places

Senator KERR. Now, let's take that situation.

Senator ALLOTT. Where only one is interested in it.

Senator KERR. Let's take that situation where there are 30 families. Senator ALLOTT. I would say 30 to 40, just taking a rough guess.

Senator KERR. Just take a hypothetical situation of 30 families. And let's say the project there would cost $300,000. That would be $10,000 a family. Now, my judgment is that the cost of the upper Colorado when applied to all the families benefited would not exceed $10,000 a family.

Senator ALLOTT. Are you speaking just of the flood-control feature? Senator KERR. Yes. Now, what I cannot do, as far as I am concerned, is to ride to the conclusion that if you build a $300,000 project that benefits 30 families you ought to charge them $10,000 apiece, but if you have got a $30 million project that benefits

Senator ALLOTT. 300,000 would it be?

Senator KERR. I think it would be 30,000 families. I do not want to get lost here in the maze of mathematical comparisons. But assuming that it was 30,000 families, why should you do something for 30,000 families for nothing and refuse to do it for 30 families if they are in a similar position and you are going to carry on a similar project and work on a similar program?

Senator ALLOTT. The chairman loves to do what I like to do in arguing, and that is to draw in from the extremes and show things that make it look very bad. And there is a great deal of merit in what he says. I do not know what the answer is in between. It occurs to me that there is an area here, however, in which the benefits may not in a sense be completely public, and this is in the lower end of the scale where the elements are not public but more in an individual

sense.

I would come back at the chairman and answer his question this way: How would you control, if you go into such a thing, the building of, say, 5 dams on my land, which essentially is going to protect me from flood but which does not essentially affect other people except maybe 2 or 3 or 4 families?

Senator KERR. Well, the first thing I would do in responding to that would be to ask you to illustrate a situation by a place, and I think that it would be difficult to find. But if it were found, I would say that I would see no reason to discriminate against one individual as contrasted to 2 or 4 or 40 or 1,000.

It occurs to me that in a certain field of flood control the Federal Government has validated the principle of responsibility for the cost of prevention of floods. But I intended to develop this along the line that if you were going to impose upon 1 or 10 or 20 families all or a portion of that flood-control cost, would you do it by compelling them to advance the money or would you do it on the basis of letting them have the same opportunity to reimburse any cost imposed upon them along the same line as is now available to those in an irrigation district or as is proposed with reference to a municipality here with reference to the part of the cost allocable to the storage of the water for that municipality?

Senator ALLOTT. Would there be any objection to permitting both? Senator KERR. There surely would not be any objection if he is going to make it on a reimbursable basis to giving him a privilege to pay for it at the start. But if they are going to pay for the flood control cost, why have the Federal Government do it? Why have the Federal Government build it if one man, if this one man

Senator ALLOTT. Maybe I have given the wrong impression; I feel that the Federal Government does have a responsibility in this. The

one end of the spectrum, so to speak, that worries me is if the Federal Government covers there are probably people who can testify to this more adequately than I, but if the Federal Government is going to embrace this whole field, how is it going to avoid building dams on the lands of almost every farmer and rancher in your State or mine or any other place?

In other words, is it not going to encompass such a huge program that the financial aspects of it preclude it?

Senator KERR. Well, I want to tell you that the passage of this act, if passed in line with the recommendations before the committee, will certainly carry the Federal Government a much greater part of the distance between its present posture and the one you have described. Senator ALLOTT. I think that is right, sir.

Senator KERR. The passage of this act is going to take us more than halfway between where we are now and the situation you describe, in my judgment. But, of course, the other answer to the question is that that matter is not before the committee.

And don't misunderstand me. I am not seeking to embarrass my good friend from Colorado. I am just exploring with him the elements that are going to be before this committee in the consideration of this bill.

Senator ALLOTT. That is correct, and I recognize those elements. I am concerned about them, because, being from a country such as I am

Senator KERR. And such as I am in the western part of Oklahoma. Senator ALLOTT. And such as you are.

Senator KERR. And our friends from Nebraska and South Dakota. Senator ALLOTT. And such as these two people.

Senator KERR. Yes.

Senator ALLOTT. I recognize the implied situation that might come, for example, through western Nebraska, western South Dakota, a good portion of Oklahoma and a good portion of Colorado. We might easily have an application for the building of these flood-control projects on individual farms and individual small rather than use "individual" I will use "very small units"-in such quantities that the financial implications of it are just beyond the imagination. And I do not seek to avoid any answer on the thing, but I do not have an answer to it.

Senator HRUSKA. Mr. Chairman, may I ask this further question of the Senator from Colorado. The way I understand Public Law 566 now and as envisioned in H. R. 8750, it would still be incumbent upon the individual projects of this kind to furnish the land and the easements, the rights-of-way, and the maintenance, and these other things which are heretofore furnished. Now, in some instances the cost of those elements is great, so great that it puts an undue burden on the people within that project to pay for construction of the dam. As I understand further, this Public Law 566 does give discretion to the Department of Agriculture to sort of alleviate that situation and put less of a burden of actual construction on those people in that situation, recognizing I presume in theory that this is a common problem and it is one that should be met and where those burdens are too great the people should be relieved in portion.

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