The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-07-25

EuSOm IVA way OI llIe. And Will H. Webb, executive vice president of the National Rivers and Harbors Congress, who comes from Tennessee himself, accuses IVA of all sorts of dreadful things, in- cluding even the opening up of the IVA power dams in flood time, to drown poor people downstream.
 Hagie and Webb are two of the prime movers on the f1ve-member Co-ordinating Committee which manages the campaign of the 31 or- ganizations making up the Water Lobby. If the Lobby can convince enough congressman that IVA isn't the unmitigated good it is supposed to be, then there is good chance of stopping extension of the "au- thority' idea to the Missouri, Co., lumbia and other river basins where such planning goes on.
 Basis for the Water Lobby case against IVA is complete. The point that, "TVA represents change in the American form of government" has been mentioned previously in OAACoC A1oPaUI11COs x1dS1C that the three-man IVA board has never used all the political and economic power granted in the or- iginal legislation creating a govern ment corporation to develop re- sources of the region. Hagie says these powers might easily be abused, and points to this danger.
 POWERS GRANTED
 IVA QUESTIONED
 Judge Clifford H. Stone, Of Dem yer, a National Reclamation Asso- ciation director, says IVA has been granted many powers which were never surrendered to the Federal Government by the sovereign states. He makes a strong states rights argument" against the IVA idea.
 Judge Stone also objects to the cost of IVA. He mentions $800,- 100000 expenditures over the past F years and declares another $200,- 100000 will have to be spent to com- plete the project. None of this has been returned to the FeGeral treas ury.
 Over half of TWAS expenditures have been for the development of public power projects. The Water Lobby claims this is nothing but 8 government subsidy enabling IVA to sell electricity at rates far below what private power producers would have to charge.
 Cheap power has of course been one of TWAS great talking points The IVA experiment was intended to provide yardstick for measur- ing rates in other parts of the coun- try. But the Water Lobby claims it is a rubber yardstick not applic- able elsewhere. The Tennessee river is 700 miles long against the Mis- souri's 2,500. The Tennessee Valley cover less than 3 per cent of the U. s. while the Missouri Valley covers IS per cent. While IVA may be easy to administer because it is small, administration of the Missouri basin by single authority would not be feasible.
 FLOOD CONTROL
 CLAIMS ASSAILED
 TWAS flood control has been cri- ticized as worthless to the lower Ohio and Mississippi by Congress man Will Wilmington of Mississip- pi, who is also director of the Na- tional Rivers and Harbors Congress, opposing the IVA plan. Whiting ton further charges that reservoirs behind dams in the Tennessee Val- ley now cover permanently six sevenths of the bottom lands that used to be covered with water only in flood times and produced crops the rest of the time. Now, he says, they don't produce anything.
 Finally the Water Lobby claims that IVA is merely duplication of bureaucracy. For the Corps of En- gineers or the Bureau of Reclama- tion coulG better plar the Gans, and the Department of Agriculture has to run the experiments on fertilizers and soil conservation.
 All these charges are made by people who admittedly have other, conflicting interests. They must be balanced against what IVA says in its own defense.