Speech of Senator Harry S. Truman at the Mississippi Valley Flood Control Association

SPEECH OF HONORABLE HARRY S. TRUMAN Before Members of the Mississippi Valley Flood Control Association October 12, 1944 For five years I have attended the sessions of the Mississippi Valley Flood Control Association, and have found them most instructive. I em attending them this year. even in the midst of an election campaign, because I believe that flood control is one of our most important problems, and because I believe that your activities are truly a service to the 'whole nation. Water under control is our greatest asset. Without it we could not live. But not even fire is more terrible or destructive than raging floods. We all recall the great flood on the Mississippi River in 1927. 700,000 people were driven from their homes. More than a quarter million livestock were drowned. And more than four million acres of crops were de- stroyed. Terrible as that disaster was, it was only the greatest of a large number of floods that for years had devastated our great river valleys, the most fertile land in the United States. The loss was not confined to the hardships of the people in the lower reaches of the river valleys who were flooded out. A less immediate and less spectacular but enormously important loss was sustained by those in the upper valleys as far north as Minnesota. They suffered from soil erosion, declining fertility of the land, a lowering of the ground water level and a loss of water that could have been used to great advantage for power and navigation purposes. For example, the United States Department of Agriculture in August, 1928, the year after the great flood estimated that soil erosion alone was costing the farmers too hundred million dollars a year. The cost of proper flood control would be great, just as the cost of insurance premiums is great. But the returns from sound flood control practices can exceed the cost. Through intelligent action, a national scourge can be turned into a national asset of the first magnitude. From the great flood of 1927 we learned once and for all that we could not safoly rely upon building bigger and higher levees to contain the floods. That course only raised the water levels and made the floods even more dangerous when they finally broke through the levees. The terrible flood of 1927 forced a reluctant Federal Government to recognize that it had to assume some responsibility for this great national problem. A number of conflicting plans were hastily devised, and the Jones-Reic Flood Control Act was enacted in 1928. In many respects that legislation was helpful. It belatedly recognized for the first time the duty of the Federal Government to assist in overcoming floods, and it made limited Federal appropriations, but there was no well considered plan to end floods. The size of: some of the levees was increased. In some places the levees were set back to increase the distance between the banks of the river. In the lower reaches of the Mississippi, floodways were to be installed so that flood waters would be drawn off into less valuable areas in order to protect the remainder These provisions provided a substantial measure of rolief at a great cost. But they did not and could not assure safety from floods. At best they were mere stop-gaps. And on the whole they were very expensive stop-gaps. (OVER) CO