St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-11-02
Summary of the Annual Report of the Mis-
sissippi River Improvement Com
mission.
A Detailed Statement of What the Com
mission Has Accomplished Dur
ing the Year.
The Greatest Amount of Money and
Work Put in Between Cairo
and Vicksburg.
Recommendations for Appropria-
tions and for Further Prosecu-
tion of the Work.
THAT the River EIay Roll.


of the fiscal year (June 30) is made public.
The works at various points are briefly de-
scribed in general terms in the report
proper and the detailed reports of the Of
ficerS in charge of each work are submitted
as appendices.
The commission cites the acts of congress
under which it acts and quotes from it's own
previous report statements of it's plans and
purposes, which it comments upon. The
plan, it says, contemplates the closing of
outlets of both low river outlets and
crevasses. The concentration of water
ways of the river where widths are excess
sive and the navigation bad and the main
tenance of the banks. The execution Of
the plans is thus briefly outlined and in
strict accordance with its original intent
and for no other object or purpose the
money appropriated by congress has been
Total cost of bank revetment
between Cairo and Vicksburg up to June
80, 1885, has been So, 240, 600, and of works
for contracting channels $3.50, 1000. A very
considerable portion of the sum expended
for bank revetment was designed to give
protection to certain city sites and harbors-
Memphis, Vicksburg and others. Some of
these required special and prompt treat
ment. 1t delta points had not been held by
REVETTING ITS BANKS
with mattresses at considerable value the
city of Vicksburg would long before now
have been practically an inland town en-
tirely cut off from the river At Memphis
great values were also put in jeopardy by
a rapidly caving bank which threatens to
carry off a portion of the city. Bank revet-
ment, offering the only possible means of
arresting the danger, was successfully ap-
piled in this case. ''It has been claimed" !"
says the commission, ''that the caving of
banks should be arrested by works of chan
mel contraction at the wide places above
and much unwarranted stress seems to have
been laid on hypocritical discussion intro
duced into the first report of the commission
while it was stated theoretically that uni
form depths joined to uniform width ap-
plies uniform velocity, and this means there
will be no violent eddies or cross-currents,
and no great or sudden fluctuations in the
silt transport power of the current, but is now
asserted in that report, nor is it believed
by the commission that uniform depth
or any very near approach to tits practically
attainable upon the Mississippi or upon any
large silt bearing stream flowing through an
alluvial bed, and having a difference Of
forty-tive to fifty feet between its high and
low water stages. In it's low stage the OBJ
structed portions OF the river present a
series of shallow crossings where the width
is excessive and which is frequently only
six feet deep, alternating with concave
bends where there are depths OF eighty feet
and in some cases ninety to ninety-fiye feet
and upwards. The securing induced by
works of improvement at the wide places
will
DEEPEN THE SAME
across bars to fifteen or twenty feet, leaving
the depths in the bends substantially I'M
changed, so that the full measure of ap-
proach to uniform depth attained by these
results consist in that where there formerly
existed as between the deep bends and the
shallow bars a difference ranging from
seventy to ninety feet in depth there now
exists after the improvement difference of
sixty to eighty feet or more.
For the present the plans of improve
ments contemplate liberal use of revet-
ment, roughly estimated to cost more than
four times as much as the corresponding
stated that it is not the intention, nor has it
been the practice of the commission, to pro-
tect by revetment, merely because it is cav
ing. Other considerations must govern this
question. But where an imminent danger
threatens the destruction of interests of
great values, as, for example, where cav
ing bend is about to attack in the flank and
carry away costly works of improvement or
produce disastrous cutoff, OF where a city
river front is to be maintained as at VickS
burg, or a portion Of city is to be protected
against undermining, as at Memphis, then
it believes it to be imperative that the local
remedy of holding the banks intact by
mattress, reyet or other equivalent
devices should be adopted. If the restora-
ton of navigable low water front to por-
ton of the city of Vicksbu-g at a reasona-
BILE cost is practicable, it will require several
years for it's consummation in the manner
proposed. The commission
RENEW THE RECOMMENDATIONS
that provision be made by law for the ap-
preparation by the United States, through
proceedings in the federal courts, of land
and material needed in the work. Of the
S75, 900 appropriated for the salaries and
expenses OF the commission for the last
fiscal year there remained on hand at the
end of the year So, 272; of the $75, 900 ap-
propriated for surveys there remained
$16, 14s. The expenditures for improve
ments from Oct. 1 to the end of the year
were 81, 1886, S32, and there remained on
hand July 1, 1885, $3s9.97s to meet.
For this there are two reasons.
First, that it has been found neces-
sary to make use of stronger and
firmer and therefore more expensive meth
ods of construction than those upon which
from the want of experimental knowledge
that estimate was based, and second, that
the percentage of loss from floods has eX-
ceeded what was formerly thought to be a
fair allowance for this contingency. Much
of their loss, however, would have been
spared had the stronger methods of con-
struction been resorted to at an earlier date
and future loss from this cause may there
fore in some measure be avoided. In other
respects, also, the experience gained in the
application of new and untried devices can
not fail to tend in the direction of economy.
There must be no just ground for apprehen-
sion that the ultimate cost of this improve
ment will be inordnately great, or will ex-
ceed what the government will be fully
JUSTIFIED IN EXTENDING
on great national work, in the success of
which so large and so varied interests are
involved. In order, however, that the in
creased depths already secured upon two
reaches of bad navigation may be utilized
and made of some practical value, the i'm
provement should be extended up stream
and down. Indeed, it cannot be said that
the navigation has received any practical
benefit whatever, as long as the improve
ments are restricted to localities hemmed in
by bad rivers both above and below. 1t
might be better, were no middle course
open, to spread each appropriation
judiciously over all the six reaches OF bad
navigation selected for improvement below
Cairo, adding little each year, if practic-
able and available, to the depth of the worst
bar, than to confine the work to the Plum
point and Lake Providence reaches, as here
tofore. Even if the low river navigation of
those two places should be rapidly deepened