Special Message to the Congress on Flood Control in the Mississippi River Basin.

To the Congress of the United States:

The major opportunity of our generation to increase the wealth of the Nation lies in the development of our great river systems. I urged in the State of the Union message on January 6, 1947, that the program for improvement of our rivers be pushed with full vigor.

Since that time, the urgency of one phase of our water resources control program has been demonstrated forcefully and tragically. Vast areas of the most productive sections of the Missouri and Upper Mississippi River Valleys have been subjected to a series of the most destructive floods in our history. Too frequently within our memory, as well as in earlier years, the Mississippi River Basin has been similarly stricken. This continued threat and the recurring and accumulative damage to the national economy and well-being call strongly for the prompt use of more effective counter-measures. Prudence requires that adequate measures be taken for protection against these devastating floods.

Measures for flood control should be integrated with plans for the use and conservation of water resources for other purposes. This will insure maximum control of floods at the least cost and will permit the full utilization of water resources in the development of this vast region.

The drainage basin of the Mississippi River and its tributaries comprises nearly half of the Nation in area and population. It is a rich central core from which stem goods and services vital to the entire country. A large proportion of the people in this great central basin, their homes and businesses, their fertile farm lands and their transportation and communication systems are concentrated in the flood plains and low lands immediately adjacent to the rivers. Nature also requires the use of these flood plains for drainage. Consequently, we must pay the price for occupancy of these lands, either in the form of continued flood damage or in preventive measures.

The economy of controlling floods as compared with the cost of continuing under the handicap of their disruptive force has been amply demonstrated.

In the short 10-year period from 1937 through 1946 a total of more than a billion dollars in flood damage has been suffered in the Mississippi Basin. The real cost to the Nation, of course, has been much greater. Dollars are not adequate to measure the toll in the hundreds of lives lost and the suffering of millions of persons affected. The cost of rehabilitation and repair of flood damage, though staggering, is but the initial burden. Extended effects, both in distance and time, are reflected throughout the Nation as a result of the disruption of lives and activities in the flood zone. These more remote inroads on our health and prosperity are not so obvious, but they may total many times the more apparent losses in the flood area.

In the light of the accumulative burden of our flood problem in the decade just past, the impact of this year's floods in the Missouri and Upper Mississippi Valleys is even more appalling. Again, unprecedented flood stages have been experienced at many points on these rivers, and the total damages will approach and may exceed the half billion dollar loss suffered in 1937. Again thousands of our people have been forced to leave their homes and their normal pursuits. All or a large part of the year's income has been ruthlessly taken from thousands of farmers. The loss of their crops is not only a personal calamity to these farmers but is a staggering blow to the Nation and to other countries where many additional thousands will be deprived of essential foods.

The recurrent floods in the Mississippi Basin constitute a national problem which demands immediate attention. The means for solution are available to us and will permit us, at the same time, to prevent destruction and waste of productive soils, to improve the utility of the rivers for transportation, to conserve water that would otherwise be wasted with destructive force and to use this water constructively for domestic purposes, for irrigation, for development of needed electric power, for the abatement of pollution and for the enjoyment of recreational activities.

After the destructive floods of 1927 in the Lower Valley of the Mississippi, the Congress charged the Corps of Engineers of the War Department with the preparation of plans for control of floods in that valley, and with the making of surveys of tributary rivers for their development for flood control and allied purposes. Since that time, surveys, studies and preparation of plans have gone forward hand in hand with urgently needed construction. As a result we now have available comprehensive and detailed plans for most of the work needed to eliminate destructive floods and provide for the beneficial use of water in the Mississippi River Basin.

The Congress has also provided legislative authority to proceed with these plans.

The Flood Control Act of May 15, 1928, authorized a plan for the protection of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Subsequent legislation has permitted the extension and development of that plan to a high degree of completion. The Flood Control Act of 1938 approved comprehensive flood control .plans for each of the five major tributary basins of the Mississippi River and authorized the expenditure of funds for the initiation and partial accomplishment of those plans. Subsequent general flood control acts have authorized expenditure of additional sums to continue this work. These acts provided that Federal investigations and improvements for flood control and allied purposes should be prosecuted by the War Department, under the direction of the Secretary of War and the supervision of the Chief of Engineers.

The Flood Control Act of 1936 provided for Federal investigation of watersheds and for measures of run-off and water-flow retardation and soil erosion prevention on watersheds, to be prosecuted by the Department of Agriculture. The Reclamation Laws authorize irrigation programs and the prosecution of such programs by the Bureau of Reclamation of the Department of the Interior, in coordination with plans for flood control. The Federal Water Power Acts and appropriate parts of the flood control acts provide for participation of the Federal Power Commission when hydroelectric power is involved in these programs.

A comprehensive program for flood control in the entire Mississippi River Basin is essential. The Lower Mississippi River, as it flows through its alluvial valley, must carry the flood discharge from every tributary river basin from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains. Fortunately we have never had a simultaneous occurrence of major floods on all the great tributaries: the Missouri, Ohio, Upper Mississippi, Arkansas, and Red Rivers. Such a coincidence of flood crests is highly improbable, but if it did occur under present conditions, the floods would overflow the entire Lower Mississippi Valley from Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico and would cause untold damage to one of the richest areas in the world. It would not be feasible to build levees high enough and floodways wide enough to pass such a flood safely to the Gulf. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the concurrence of tributary floods by a coordinated system of storage reservoirs in the major tributary basins. In these same tributary basins, levees, floodwalls and diversion channels are necessary to protect cities, towns and farms. Farther up on the headwater tributaries of each major basin, and throughout their watersheds, soil conservation measures are needed to retard the flow and run-off and reduce the loss of topsoil which is impoverishing our farm lands and clogging our reservoirs and river channels.

Corollary to the control of floods is the harnessing of flood waters for productive uses which will return to the Government a large share of the initial investment. Fortunately the means available to us for control of floods in many cases furnish the opportunity for use of water for irrigation, navigation, and development of hydroelectric power. Multiple-use reservoirs produce these and other benefits, including the improvement of municipal and industrial water supplies, new recreational areas and opportunities, the preservation of fish and wildlife, and the abatement of pollution.

The problem confronting us is of prime importance in our national life. During the war it was unavoidably necessary to defer in large part works of this character. In the immediate post-war period conflicting needs for other Government programs caused further deferment. These conflicting needs are now diminishing, and the experience of the past few months has presented convincing evidence that we must press forward vigorously toward a solution of this problem.

In the execution of a comprehensive program for the development of the Mississippi River Basin, protection from floods is of such urgency that it should be given first attention. We already have plans for the projects which will largely provide this protection. The construction agencies of the Departments of War, Interior, and Agriculture are ready to proceed with these projects when funds are provided.

I therefore urge that this Congress undertake a program which will provide for the substantial completion within ten years of the flood control projects necessary for the protection of the Mississippi River Basin. Most of these necessary projects have already been authorized by the Congress. This ten-year program should also contain a smaller group of projects which have not yet been authorized by the Congress but are now being planned and investigated. As rapidly as the plans are completed, these projects will be submitted for approval by the Congress in accordance with present law and procedure.

An orderly program of appropriations for prosecution of this work on a sustained and comprehensive basis is essential. Any plan of this magnitude can be accomplished in an efficient manner only if the planning and constructing agencies have advance knowledge of the funds that they may expect over a period of years. If construction schedules and contracts are extended over long periods because of limited and varying appropriations, excessive costs to the Federal Government are the result. An orderly program of appropriations will get the job done efficiently and economically.

I recommend that this ten-year program be initiated during this fiscal year. The appropriations required for the first year (in addition to appropriations heretofore made or considered for the fiscal year 1948) will be approximately as follows:

War Department, Corps of

Engineers $237, 000, 000

Department of the Interior,

Bureau of Reclamation 10, 000, 000

Department of Agriculture,

Soil Conservation Service 3, 000, 000

Total $250, 000, 000

The projects for which these appropriations are recommended are essential to any program for flood control and the development of the water resources of the Mississippi River Basin. A prompt start on the ten-year program proposed in this message will be consistent with whatever type of administrative authority may be determined to be best suited to meet regional and national needs.

This plan does not change the desirability of the ultimate establishment of valley authorities, but the urgency of the flood problem is such that we must take necessary steps to expedite this program without awaiting determination of the administrative pattern for the various regional valley development programs.

In addition to the program aimed primarily at flood control, there are many valuable projects for navigation, irrigation, hydroelectric power development and other utilization of water resources which are essential to a complete and well rounded valley development program. These projects will be included in their proper place in the regular annual budget program and consequently are not specifically within the scope of this message.

We must never forget that the conservation of our natural resources and their wise use are essential to our very existence as a nation. The choice is ours. We can sit idly by--or almost as bad, resort to the false economy of feeble and inadequate measures-while these precious assets waste away. On the other hand, we can, if we act in time, put into effect a realistic and practical plan which will preserve these basic essentials of our national economy and make this a better and a richer land.

In the development of our river valleys, first things must come first. The most pressing problem is that of flood control. It is a problem of desperate urgency. What we need to do is to take immediate advantage of the Mississippi Basin authorizations-totalling almost six billion dollars--which the Congress has already voted for flood control and related purposes. Of this amount, from three and a half to four billion dollars is either directly or closely related to flood control. Let us through the next ten years accelerate our program and put this money to work, together with such additional moneys as may be required and as our economy from year to year shall permit. In that way we shall save ourselves untold billions and pave the way for the wealth production that surely will flow from the integrated development of our valleys.

HARRY S. TRUMAN