The dikes, of course, are designed for safety if the upstream dams are in. We do not have any way of predicting what path the storms are going to take. The flood of August resulted from the fact that Hurricane Diane changed her course. The previous information that we had was that the hurricane would go up to Rochester, N. Y., and go across the lake. For some reason it changed and roughly followed the boundary line between Connecticut and Massachusetts, with a great deal of precipitation both above and below that reaching almost to Northampton, and then going east over to the Boston area. If conditions in the higher altitude which governed that storm had been a little different it could have gone on up through that upper area as did the 1938 hurricane. With such precipitation up through there, with the additional area and quantity, there certainly would have been great destruction. The dikes at Springfield and other places would have been over the top. Even though in this vast storm we had no flooding in the upper area, it is dangerous to go on the assumption that we will not have any difficulties the next time, because the next one might be right in there. I should now like to speak for the State of Vermont with respect to East Barre and Wrightsville Reservoirs which are also in this proposal. They are on the Winooski River or branches of it. They were built in 1933-1936-1938 under the Soil Conservation Corps, veteran companies. Their design is the design developed after the 1927 floods. As I remember, they were based on the greatest unit runoff in that flood plus 25 percent. It happens that the greatest runoff was at East Barre, and that was 300 cubic feet per second per square mile. Further than that would be roughly 380 cubic feet per second per square mile. Since that time a great deal of new information has come into the design picture. For instance, in our own State, in 1938, on the West River and one of its branches, and on a similar area, we had a run of 662, which is almost double the design factor that this one is. In the 1944 flood control bill the Corps of Engineers proposed reconstruction of those dams to take care of their present design criteria, and under present conditions they would be inadequate and would be overtop of any such storm, for instance, as the storm reached the Westfield River in this area, they proposed to raise the dams and to increase their spillway capacity. That is involved in each one of them. East Barre is located perhaps 5 miles above the city of Barre and above the city of Montpelier, and Wrightsville is about 4 miles above Montpelier on a different branch. I think it is important that both of them be made safe against the sort of floods the engineers now say we have. Thank you. Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you very much. We are happy to have had you appear before this committee. The committee is now adjourned. Woonsocket Channel improvement project, Rhode Island. 133, 138, 139 Cost of emergency work and rehabilitation__ 146 Damages, extent of.. 31 Delay in completing New England flood-control projects, reason for.. 63 Ball Mountain Reservoir, Vt. Buffumville Reservoir, Mass. (II) |