Dams, Locks & Channels

Transportation

Dams, Locks & Channels

A bill to expend $144,881,902 for future dam-building, lock-building and channel-dredging last week lay on the desk of the U. S. President who answered "Engineer" to the census occupation-query and who last autumn promised his countrymen just such busy-beaverish legislation (TIME, Nov. 4). At home with this measure above all others, he signed it. Then he said: "It was with particular satisfaction that I signed the Rivers & Harbors bill as it represents the final authorization of the engineering work . . . I have advocated for over five years."

Explaining the bill's size, he commented: "It is a long view plan for the future. It will require many years to complete. . . . [I propose] that we should approach the problem on sound engineering lines, completing the main trunk systems and gradually extending the work outward. . . . The bill does not call for any increase in the budget this year. . . ."

Proudly he concluded: "In aggregate this inland waterway undertaking represents a larger project than even the Panama Canal. It will provide employment for thousands . . . and should bring great benefits to our farms and to our industries."

Interested U. S. citizens who examined the bill found it chiefly provided:

1) Government acceptance and operation of the Erie, Oswego, and Illinois Waterway Canals (whenever New York and Illinois vote to surrender them), thus linking, through the Great Lakes, the Atlantic Ocean and Mississippi River.

2) Dredging and maintaining a 24-ft. channel in the Great Lakes, a 27-ft. channel in the St. Lawrence River from Ogdensburg, N. Y., to Lake Ontario--first step in the proposed Lakes-to-Atlantic big-ship waterway.

3) Digging a 9-ft. channel up the Mississippi River (prime "main trunk system") from the mouth of the Illinois to Minneapolis & St. Paul; reaching a 6-ft. channel into the wheat country as far as Sioux City, Iowa, along the Mississippi's tributary, the Missouri.

4) Improving the existing intercoastal waterways, such as that which makes it possible to barge from Manhattan to Beaufort, N. C., without entering the ocean and that which traverses most of Florida's length. When the whole project is finished, barges may travel inland from Beaufort to Sioux City, a journey of nearly 3,000 mi.

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