Explanation of amendment (1)

Justification

The amendment restores the reduction of $198,000 made by the House in the Budget estimate for this appropriation. This amount is distributed to activities as follows:

A break-down of the restoration request by objects of expenditure follows: 01 Personal services:

At rates prior to Public Law 900.

The restoration of the $198,000 House reduction in the noncooperative water investigational activities-a reduction of nearly 20 percent of the only funds currently available to the Geological Survey which can be directed toward reducing deficiencies in coverage and filling the gaps in the total program of water investigations-is requested.

The House reduction would necessitate the stoppage of certain investigations which are currently underway and which are so far from completion that the expenditures to date would have produced relatively little dependable data.

Termination of such noncooperative investigations will have a direct effect upon the over-all value of the national program which has for many years been composed of the many cooperative programs, both with States and other Federal agencies, all carefully cemented together by the application of the already relatively small noncooperative program.

Explanation of amendment (2)

The amendment restores the reduction of $30,000 in the limitation for persona services in the District of Columbia, made by the House in the budget estimate. The Geological Survey's need for a more adequate limitation on personal services in the District of Columbia arises primarily from increases in (1) the "gaging streams" program, (2) the number of reports and records required for higher levels of authority, (3) the requests for water data by members of Congress and other Federal agencies in the District of Columbia, (4) the work load of coordination between Federal agencies in the fields of water development, and (5) salary increases (Public Law 900).

The restoration of the $30,000 reduction in the limitation by the House is recommended to enable the Geological Survey to maintain the minimum administrative control over its highly decentralized organization, to meet the current reporting requirements, and to furnish water data in accordance with the increasing requests in the District of Columbia.

BUDGET AND HOUSE ALLOWANCE

Mr. WRATHER. The amount recommended by the budget was $4,198,000 for this item, of which $4,000,000 was allowed, $198,000 disallowed, by the House. The $4,000,000 makes whole our cooperative program, but it cuts us short in the noncooperative, or Federal, phases of our program. It reduces our ability to do the job which we ordinarily do on straight Federal funds.

On the administration of river compacts, on the special sediment studies connected with the silting up of dams and reservoirs, on a wide variety of projects which ordinarily are paid for out of Federal funds, it clips our wings on doing any substantial research on instrumentation which would enable us to do a better job of stream gaging. It confines us more or less to the program of the day-by-day requirements that we have to meet in connection with our stream-gaging and underground-water program.

In other words, it leaves us short of funds to carry on Federal activities which we believe would be of great benefit to the water program as a whole. We feel that one of the things the Survey most urgently needs is funds which the committee will allow to us to spend at our discretion as we see they are needed in the better handling of our obligations.

MISSISSIPPI EMBAYMENT PROJECT

Senator HAYDEN. Senator McKellar has asked that the letter he received from Thomas H. Allen, president of the Memphis light, gas, and water division, relating to ground-water survey covering the Mississippi Valley southward from Cairo, be included in the record, but perhaps you would like to tell us a little more about it.

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Mr. WRATHER. I think he refers probably to a project which we have referred to as the Mississippi embayment project. When I use that word "embayment," I am using it in the geological sense. covers an area that includes western Tennessee, western Kentucky, southeastern Missouri, and eastern Arkansas. It is an area in which the geological formations loop up northward to the mouth of the Ohio River, forming a kind of V-shaped arrangement down which the Mississippi River flows. This basin is filled with recent sediments, which carry underground water in very considerable amount. underground water is one of the most important factors in the industrial development of that region. It is a project that cannot very well be covered in any one State cooperative program because it is an interstate proposition that involves as many as five States, including the rice-growing area in Arkansas, the industrial area extending north and south of Memphis and even extending farther down into Mississippi. It is an area for which we requested special funds because the Mississippi embayment should be considered as a unit since the water problems extend across State boundaries.

USE OF UNDERGROUND WATER

Senator HAYDEN. How are the underground waters used?

Mr. WRATHER. Mr. Paulsen can tell you more in detail about that, Senator.

Mr. PAULSEN. I think the great interest right now is in connection with industrial and municipal use in the vicinity of Memphis.

Senator HAYDEN. They do use pumps to obtain water to grow rice over in Arkansas.

Mr. PAULSEN. Oh, yes, very much so. Arkansas is very much interested in the development of those water supplies for agricultural use as well as for certain industrial uses. In western Tennessee the great need is to develop additional supplies for their industrial and municipal activities. There is a tremendous interest in the development of the whole industrial and agricultural activity of those five States that Dr. Warther just mentioned. It is an interstate problem because that embayment area covers these four States and a cooperative statement of any one State just wouldn't answer all the questions.

Senator HAYDEN. Is there any money in this bill for that purpose? Mr. PAULSEN. No; there isn't any.

Senator HAYDEN. How much would it cost to do the job and how long would it take to do it?

Mr. PAULSEN. We don't have the record of that. We have recommended consideration of that program, but it has not yet been included in any of our active programs.

REQUEST OF BUDGET BUREAU

Senator HAYDEN. Did you ask the budget for any money? That is what I want to get at.

Mr. PAULSEN. Yes; we did. It was a supplemental estimate. I have forgotten the exact amount. As I recall it runs into two or three hundred thousand dollars over a period of a few years. The estimate submitted to the Bureau of the Budget for fiscal year 1950 totaled $100,000.

PURPOSE OF PROGRAM

Senator GURNEY. What you are going to do is try to find out how much water there is underground and what it costs to get it out and how deep down it is? Is that the idea? Whether it is artesian flow and whether you have to pump it, is that it?

Mr. PAULSEN. Yes, the nature of the whole area from the standpoint of the quantity and quality of underground water available for usage.

RELATIONSHIP OF PROGRAM TO FLOOD CONTROL

Senator GURNEY. It is an unusual request because the Congress is importuned by all those States in that area to build dikes to hold it back. Now here you come forward with an idea to get some other kind of water to the top of the ground when we are spending many millions to keep it off the top of the ground. That does not square with my thinking of that area.

Mr. PAULSEN. It is important in relation to the flood-control problem as well as to the development of safe yields for industrial and agricultural use in that whole region especially during drought periods. Senator HAYDEN. I can understand, of course, where you need an assured water supply, near some manufacturing plant, it would be much better for their use to do that than to take silty water out of the river.

Mr. PAULSEN. Yes.

Senator HAYDEN. Will you put in this record the amount and the justification for it that you submitted to the Bureau of the Budget? Mr. PAULSEN. I would be glad to.

Senator GURNEY. Include what the whole program would cost and let Congress know how much it would take to do the job. Not only this year, but over the number of years it would take.

Mr. PAULSEN. I will be glad to do that.

PROPOSED MATCHED FUNDS for ground WATER SUPPLY DEVELOPMENT

Senator HAYDEN. Mr. Allen's letter to Senator McKellar suggests the appropriation of a sum of about $100,000 to the Geological Survey to do that part of the work which is necessarily beyond the limitations of the geological departments of the various States. If an appropriation of this kind were made, should it be contingent upon an appropriate contribution from the four States?

Mr. PAULSEN. Not necessarily. It would tie in with the cooperative programs in the five States. It would tie in very definitely with our existing cooperative programs in Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Kentucky. We do not have a ground water cooperative program in Missouri. There would be a missing link there so far as cooperation with the five States is concerned.

Senator HAYDEN. I will place these letters in the record, as requested by Senator McKellar, and then if you will place in your justification for the request you made of the budget, I think we will have the picture.

Mr. PAULSEN. We had no idea a letter of that kind would appear here.

(The letters and information referred to follow :)

MISSISSIPPI VALLEY EMBAYMENT

The Mississippi Valley embayment is an area of about 45,000 square miles in the Mississippi Valley, extending from southern Arkansas northward to the mouth of the Ohio River. The area includes northern Mississippi, western Tennessee, eastern Arkansas, southeastern Missouri, and southwestern Kentucky. Memphis, Tenn., is nearly centrally located in the area.

The area is predominantly agricultural; 72 percent of the 3,000,000 inhabitants are classified as rural. About 800,000 people live in urban areas, the largest of which are Memphis and Jackson, Tenn.; Little Rock and Pine Bluff, Ark.; Paducah, Ky.; and Sikeston, Mo. The urban communities are largely supported by trade with the rural population and urban prosperity is closely tied in to the agricultural prosperity, thus there is need for supplemental water at a reasonable cost to prevent crop failure.

The most valuable natural resources of the area are the soil and the water that makes the soil productive and sustains the lives of the inhabitants. The average annual precipitation is 45 to 50 inches. However, droughts are common during the growing season.

More than 90 percent of the water used in the area for domestic, industrial, irrigation, and municipal supplies comes from wells and springs because ground water is nearly everywhere available and costs less to develop and treat than surface water. In the Memphis area more than 100,000,000 gallons of ground water a day is used for municipal and industrial purposes. In Arkansas more than 400,000,000 gallons of ground water a day is required for rice irrigation during the 3-month growing season. The use of ground water to irrigate crops such as cotton, corn, and oats is increasing rapidly over the whole embayment area. It is reported by reliable authority that application of water to a cotton crop during drought periods would result in savings that would pay for a well and irrigation equipment. Under such conditions no cotton farmer can long

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afford to be without an irrigation system. It is conceivable that eventually all farmers would install such systems and the resulting demand for ground water might become greater than the supply. Industrial expansion and increased agricultural prosperity are therefore dependent on the availability, amount, and quality of ground water.

Ground water in the Mississippi Valley embayment occurs in four principal aquifers (ground-water reservoirs), all of which extend under more than one State and none of which is sufficiently explored so that the availability, amount and quality of the ground water can be evaluated. It would be unwise to attempt a large-scale development without this information.

Aquifer 1 consists of Cretaceous formations near or at the surface around the eastern, northern, and western edges of the area in Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas. From these peripheral areas they dip downward toward the center of the embayment. Where near the surface these formations yield fresh water but at Memphis, where they are nearly 3,000 feet below the surface, they contain highly mineralized water. The amount of ground water used and the amount in storage in these formations are not known but they may be very large.

Aquifer 2, the "1,400-foot sand," occurs at a depth of about 1,400 feet under Memphis and yields more than 10,000,000 gallons daily to wells in western Tennessee and eastern Arkansas. The formation containing the "1,400-foot sand" extends about 100 miles in an east-west direction and more than 150 miles in a north-south direction, underlying parts of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas, and may extend northward to southern Missouri. It may yield highly mineralized water in the southern part of the area.

Aquifer 3 occurs at a depth of about 300 to 500 feet under Memphis and yields water in excess of 150,000,000 gallons per day in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi. The continuity of the layers of sand in this zone and the amount of recharge are not known. The water in this aquifer is believed to be fresh throughout the area.

Aquifer 4, consisting of Quaternary formations generally occurring at a depth of less than 150 feet, yields water for domestic and municipal supplies over almost all of the embayment area. In Arkansas nearly 400,000,000 gallons of water per day are used during the 3-month rice growing season. Serious overpumping occurs in the Grand Prairie region in Arkansas. The Quaternary formation is of particular importance to agricultural prosperity in the area and its safe yield, and the possibility of increasing recharge by artificial means, should be studied.

These principal aquifers form one of the largest, most productive, and most important ground-water provinces in the United States. All yield water to wells in more than one State. Water may enter the aquifer in one State and move to centers of pumping in other States. In each aquifer the effects of pumping may extend across State boundaries. Because of these facts a study should be made of the aquifers on a regional basis regardless of State boundaries. The present investigations being made by Federal Geological Survey, in cooperation with the city of Memphis and the States of Arkansas and Tennessee, give valuable information on parts of the embayment. However, they do not cover the entire area and they do not treat the study of the area on a regional basis. Therefore, in view of the fact that the Mississippi Valley embayment, including parts of five States, is underlain by a geologic and hydrologic system that must be studied as a unit, and in view of the importance of ground water for the welfare of the area, a Federal program (as contrasted to a group of Federal-State cooperative investigations in each of the States involved) is needed to make a comprehensive regional study of the ground-water resources of the area.

In studying the occurrence, quantity, and quality of ground water, it would be necessary to map the aquifers both on the surface and in the subsurface. Where an aquifer crops out and is subject to recharge the size and shape of the recharge area would be determined. The possibility of increasing the recharge through recharge wells or spreading of surface water on the recharge area would be studied. The relationship to flood control and drainage projects and to the use of excess rainfall for recharge, thus saving flood water otherwise lost to the Gulf, would be considered. If there are areas where water is discharged from the aquifer, the relationship between the aquifer and stream flow would be studied both to determine the effect of decreased discharge from the aquifer brought about by increased pumping and to predict the base flow of the streams when there is no direct surface run-off.

The extent of the water-bearing formations, the continuity of the different formations, the capacity of the ground-water reservoirs to transmit water, the