Mr. BATES. It was the intent here that probably both projects would proceed simultaneously.

Senator KUCHEL. Let me ask if you know under what law the legislature appropriated this $150,000 for study money? Surely there must have been some statute purporting to authorize the project.

Mr. BATES. If Mr. Banks or Mr. Towner is here, I think he could answer that question. I am not sure of the technicalities.

Mr. TowNER (Porter A. Towner, chief counsel, Department of Water Resources, State of California). Mr. Banks is not here. He had to return to Sacramento.

Offhand, I don't know exactly which item authorized it. The master drain itself is part of our bulletin 3, and I think the appropriation was made as an investigation, which the legislature does frequently, just to investigate the feasibility.

Senator KUCHEL. I wish, Mr. Chairman, that the official answer could be filed by the State on that point, however.

Mr. TOWNER. Yes, sir; we will file it.

Senator ANDERSON. File it for the record, Mr. Towner.

(The following communications were subsequently received from Mr. Banks:)

Senator CLINTON P. ANDERSON,

STATE OF CALIFORNIA, DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES, Sacramento, March 31, 1958.

Chairman, Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation,

United States Senate, Washington, D. C.

DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: At the March 17 and 18 hearings on S. 1887, to authorize Federal-State cooperation in the San Luis project, you requested that we provide the committee with information concerning State appropriations for studies and reports on the proposed master drain for the San Joaquin Valley. The drain is described in bulletin 3 for this department, The California Water Plan. In the past year our department has been engaged in a study of the problem which will lead to the preparation of plans, cost estimates, and feasibility determinations. These studies have been carried on under an appropriation of $104,240 made by the California Legislature in its 1957 session (item 263 (b), ch. 600, Cal. Stats. 1957). Though the budget bill is still before the legislature, an appropriation of $318,000 for continuation of this investigation during the next fiscal year seems assured.

Our studies will be completed in 1960, and, if authorized by the legislature, construction could be commenced immediately thereafter.

Very truly yours,

HARVEY O. BANKS, Director.

SACRAMENTO, CALIF., April 10, 1958.

Senator CLINTON P. ANDERSON,

Chairman, Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation,

Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C.:

Reurtel April 9, concerning purchase of site for San Luis Reservoir, State is in process of acquisition of part of site. Surveys of property to be acquired are being made, appraisal reports are being prepared, and negotiations with certain owners are in process. Legislature has appropriated $1,080,000 for purchase of part of site of this $67,000 has been expanded or obligated to date but remaining amount will be obligated before end of this year. An additional appropriation of $2,586,000 to complete acquisition of site is now pending in legislature. If this appropriation is made we will make every attempt to complete acquisition during fiscal year 1958-59. HARVEY O. BANKS,

Director, California Department of Water Resources.

Senator ANDERSON. Are there any additional questions?

Senator KUCHEL. No, sir.

Senator ANDERSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. BATES. Thank you very much, sir.

Senator ANDERSON. Congressman Engle has asked that the hearing record show-and it should show, as I told him previously-that, if he was not able to appear, he could file a statement at a later date. I want that to be in the record.

(Congressman Engle subsequently submitted the following:)

STATEMENT OF HON CLAIR ENGLE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to submit to your subcommittee my views on S. 1887, to authorize construction of the San Luis unit of the Central Valley project. I am convinced that legislation authorizing immediate Federal construction of the San Luis unit should be approved by Congress, with provisions for integration of the San Luis unit with California's own water resources development program. S. 1887 would accomplish this, and I urge favorable action on that measure by your committee. Similar legislation is pending in my committee, and hearings have been completed, and I am hopeful of favorable action thereon in the near future.

The San Luis unit is a logical and long planned extension of the Central Valley project to furnish supplemental water to some 500,000 acres on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in California. It is urgently needed now to prevent large areas from going out of production and returning to desert. The provisions in S. 1887 have been worked out jointly between the Department of the Interior, the State of California, and California Representatives in Congress. The legislation, therefore, has the support of the Department of Interior and the State of California. The legislation provides for joint use of the San Luis works by the Federal Government to serve the San Luis unit and by the State as an integral part of its Feather River project. It specifically permits the project facilities to be designed and constructed so that they may be integrated into and made a part of the State's overall plan.

I am introducing legislation to implement my proposal of last year for a new Federal-State relationship for development of California's water resources. This legislation would provide for Federal financial participation in State-constructed projects, whereas the San Luis legislation provides for State financial participation and State operation of a federally constructed project. I favor this latter course for the San Luis unit because I am convinced that this is the quickest and best way to meet the critical need in the San Luis service area. The San Luis unit has been long planned as a Federal project, and construction could get underway rather quickly after it is authorized.

California faces an acutely growing water problem as a result of the geographic maldistribution of the State's water resources and the ever-expanding population and industry. California's water resources are sufficient to meet its needs in the foreseeable future, but the problem is proper and equitable distribution. Federal authorization and construction of the San Luis unit will be of great assistance to the State of California in its plans for equitable distribution of its water resources.

Mr. Chairman, authorization of the San Luis unit in accordance with the provisions of S. 1887 will not only take care of the critical water problem in the San Luis service area, but will also provide for a link in the State's solution of its overall water problem. In closing, I again urge your favorable action on the bill which you have before you.

Senator ANDERSON. Mr. Myers, will you state your name for the record, please?

STATEMENT OF LLOYD W. MYERS, SECRETARY-MANAGER, FRESNO BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION TRADES COUNCIL, FRESNO, CALIF.

Mr. MYERS. Lloyd Myers. I am the secretary-manager of the Fresno Building & Construction Trades Council.

I am representing some 17,000 members and their families from the central San Joaquin Valley. That would be Madera, Merced, Kings, Tulare, and Fresno Counties. We have several small-business men in the area with whom we trade, the papa-mama type merchants, and people who, together, make up these small people of the valley.

We are definitely interested in this irrigation and reclamation project to the extent that it would affect the lives of all of us. We have any number of our members who have been farmers in their lives, and others who are looking forward to retiring on a little chicken ranch or to a vineyard or a prune orchard or something of that nature, and we find that the high cost of water is precluding that. The cost of the installation of wells and things runs into thousands of dollars and prohibits that type of venture.

Our members are being particularly deprived of their American heritage, in our opinion. There was a time when we could go out and drill a well and put down a pump, a simple installation that would not run over a thousand dollars, but that is no longer true, even for household water.

We have found that there are many landowners in our Central Valley, central San Joaquin Valley, but there are very few operators, and, by not being able to get water at a reasonable price, it is forcing the larger type operation. Again I say it is doing away with the familysized farm and is taking those people off the farms rather than putting them on them.

Senator ANDERSON. What do you mean by family-sized farms?

Mr. MYERS. I mean where 1 family can make a living, like father, mother, and 2 children who can operate a farm.

Senator ANDERSON. In certain sections of California they can do it

on an acre.

Mr. MYERS. That is true.

Senator ANDERSON. What are you talking about in size?

Mr. MYERS. In this particular instance, it wouldn't make any difference what size it was if it were on the west side. If you had to drill a well, it would preclude it.

Senator ANDERSON. I remember going into the Fresno area one time checking on some wells because I was planning several thousand acres in a project in New Mexico, and it seemed to me that 1,500 acres was the most satisfactory_unit because the investment in pumping equipment was so large. No family could do a thing like that.

Mr. MYERS. That is my point, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ANDERSON. What do you want us to do about that situation? Mr. MYERS. On the east side of the valley, where water is relatively accessible, a family could, if they were industrious, make a living on an acre, 5 or 10 acres, and many a family has educated their children and sent them to school and they have gone on to become substantial citizens.

Senator ANDERSON. I would like to have you tell me how that relates to this San Luis project, the fact that the water table is down so far that you have to put a well down several hundred feet. I think I pumped 180 feet, and that seems to be quite a distance. Here they are lifting water a thousand feet, are they not?

Mr. MYERS. Close to it.

Mr. O'NEILL. About 800 feet.

Senator ANDERSON. Somebody talked about 1,100 feet the other day, which scared me. What is your point with reference to this project? Do you think the bringing in of this additional water will raise the water table enough to change that picture?

Mr. MYERS. Not only will it raise the water table, but it will make water available ditchside.

Senator ANDERSON. For surface irrigation?

Mr. MYERS. Yes; put in a ditch pump. They do that extensively in the valley, and it would bring the cost of water down to where a person of modest means could get into farming and things that would bring a return to his family.

Senator ANDERSON. We had some testimony, I believe, yesterday, that the per-acre-foot-of-water cost was very high for this pumping. Mr. MYERS. That is true. I heard something around $20. Senator ANDERSON. That is the figure that I heard.

Mr. MYERS. It is not economical to raise berries or peaches or things of that nature with that price water. It just isn't feasible.

Of course, the large holdings, of necessity, must use migrant labor, and that is not a stabilizing influence on the community, people who come in with their families and all, and it is not conducive to educational facilities, religious facilities, and things of that nature, and it brings along with it its quota-maybe even more than its quota-of diseases and juvenile delinquency and things of that nature. It is not a stabilizing influence on the community.

We, of course, are glad to have them to harvest our crops and things of that nature, but we feel that we need a family-sized farm, one that would not necessarily preclude the larger type farms, but one that would permit the fellow who wanted to put his family out on a farm to make a living.

Senator ANDERSON. This would help help in developing that familysized farm?

Mr. MYERS. That is right.

Senator ANDERSON. You recognize the Southern Pacific is in this for 120,000 acres.

Mr. MYERS. We do. We will do all in our power to get them to either help us out in our struggle or to do something that would exclude them and make it economically feasible to construct. We recognize it is a problem.

We feel that, if something isn't done soon, with the type operation we have in our area, the large farming ventures now, with the dropping water table, is going to be lost to the community and that it is going to go back to the desert that it was before the wells were built. is around $75 million, and our little valley can't stand the loss of $75 million.

That

I came from the Middle West. I was in the so-called Dust Bowl, and I know what it is to be without water, I want you to know, where even a drink of water is a luxury, and we don't want to see that happen to our little valley. We can't stand it.

We have an awfully large percentage of people that I represent that are not working. As to those that are working, in all too many cases it is only part time, and that reflects on the economy of the community, and we are concerned about it.

The chamber of commerce statistics prove that we have gone down a large percent over what we were last year, and from month to month it is dropping approximately 5 percent. We can't stand that, either, and still be a prosperous community.

We know that if the money were even authorized for this, construction couldn't start, but it would restore the confidence of our people, of the merchants, of the suppliers, manufacturers, and the persons in the area so that the economy would reflect the promise of a thing to come, because we know that, once the Federal Government starts on a reclamation project, they carry through to its ultimate conclusion.

We can't go along with some of these arguments that we have heard presented here, that the State should build it, the county should build it, the Federal Government should build it. It is going to be built; so, let's get together and build it.

Senator ANDERSON. Who would you like to build it?

Mr. MYERS. We don't care who builds it, as long as it is economically feasible and that it benefits all concerned. We see no way in the world that California can build it. There isn't that much money available in the State of California, in my opinion and the opinion of the people I represent. We believe, from past experience we have had in reclamation projects, that the Federal Government is a pretty good Uncle Sam, and we can trust him to go along with this one and come out with what we believe to be the best for all concerned.

We would like to see the San Luis project authorized and construction start on it just as soon as is humanly possible, to take care of the people who are skilled people in their trades. That is, the people who have built the Central Valley project, the Madera irrigation project, the Friant Canal and Dam, and Millerton, and all those things. We have those people in the community. We have the contractors there and the equipment. Every bit of that equipment is there ready to go to work, and in all too many cases is idle. It is an investment that is showing no return to anyone, and it is something that we could well use and make use of.

We from organized labor, the AFL-CIO, have launched an equitable reclamation-irrigation law. We have gone down through history and fought for these things. We are not making land barons and people who want to just stack dollars on top of each other, or to create vast holdings for someone to become a king or earl or something like that. We are forgetting the thing that would be the most for all of the people for the resources that they so rightly own. We are not going to get out on a limb and say that what one group has proposed is better than another group has proposed, because we are not engineers. The only thing we know is what we have seen in the past from irrigation and reclamation projects, and we have seen a lot of them and they have been quite successful and have returned twofold and tenfold even the investment that it cost the Government in the form of taxes and things of that nature.

Senator ANDERSON. Would you just repeat that several times? That is a very good statement to make.

The Salt River project has probably paid its way back to the Federal Treasury 10 times in income taxes alone, as well as paying back all the money it cost the Treasury.