Brownsville herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1910-current, 1912-09-25
'LEVEE CONGRESS
MEETS IN MEMPHIS
Speakers Insist that Levee Problem
for Mississippi River is Problem
for Federal Government.
Associated Press.

-
the speakers in today's session of the
annual convention of the Interstate
Levee Association agreed that the
construction and maintenance of an
adequate levee system as the only
means of holding the Mississippi
river in check was primarily a prob
lem of the national government.
Complete federal control was
urged by several and this suggestion
found favor with the greater num-
Der Of delegates.
The convention will continue its
session tomorrow and Thursday. 1t
is planned that Twenty-Five minor
levee association of the states bor-
dering on the Mississippi will COM
bine their efforts toward securing
larger federals appropriations.
John M. Parker, whose extensive
plantations were inundated as a re-
suit of the Dogtail crevasse last
spring, in a brief and pointed adj
dress before the association today,
advocated the treatment of the
rivers and streams of the Mississippi
river watershed as a unit by the fed
eral government as the only prac-
tical method of permanently solving
the flood and overflow problem.
"The topic assigned to me is Why
should he government maintain
~levees,' T" said Mr.. Parker. "The
topic should have been Why the
government should maintain the
levees.'
"Since the building of the first
levee at New Orleans in 1717, floods
and overflows have cost the people
Of the United States in direct losses
more than all the wars the country
has ever engaged in and all the PEN
sions it has ever paid.
"All during the time since the de-
velopment Of the upland country,
the cutting of the forests, the drain
age of the farms and the leveeing out
OF natures reservoirs have been in
creasing the volume of great floods
and freshets, while the people Of the
lowland states have been fighting
the ever increasing floods, as best
they could, by building %levees, some
high, some low, some narrow, some
wide, as barriers against a d%estruc-
tive agency generated in other states
under conditions over which the en-
dangered states had, nor have they
now, any control.
politics plays a great part in
state levee work, and the patronage
is a choice political plum.
"The lowland states, with their
limited means and limited sphere q
control, can not prevent the forma-
ton Of floods in the states higher
up; but the federal government. with
it's great resources of money and
skilled engineers, with its splendid
Panama canal equipment, can con-
troll the source streams, minimize
the formation Of floods, utilize now
wasted waters by turning, them into
power dry season navigation and ir-
rigation, and thereby reduce the vol
ume OF the floods so that the press
ure will not break strong levees,
built and maintained by the federal
government when such levees shall
have been protected by revetments
that prevent the banks from caving
and the channels from changing.
eve can not solves the flood prob
lem either by state action or by
levees built by local levee boards.
"We must turn to the federal gov
eminent for a solution Of the entire
problem Of river regulation, and
when we do that we will get pro-
lection, and protection from floods
will mean record breaking de-
velopment in the valleys of the
Mississippi, the Ohio and Missouri.
'~The Mississippi river and its
tributaries are the great drain of the
nation. The government would not
permit us to dam or check the flow
Of these drains since anything Of
that sort would soon change the
farms and the towns of the upper
country into boys.
why then should anybody say
the federal government will not hest
tate to keep it's national drain in
order, or will hesitate to safeguard
us in the lower country from the
drainage of the Northern, Eastern
and Western states once we shall
have made our ease clear and III
claim heard?
I'VE must ask practical action,
that is all, and we will get it.
I'VE must go to Washington with