Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Land in Flood Control
The upstream ?ood-control program which the Congress has author ized is essentially part of the national program of promoting wise land use, which includes the application of such conservation farming and forestry practices as retard run-off and arrest soil erosion. Such prac tices are simply adaptations of nature's conservation and ?ood-control methods to the conditions of advanced cultivation. The principle of all of them is simple: To make running water walk or ecreep, to store a far greater part of it in the soil; and to do this by making the soil and its crops provide, as impediments to run-off, millions of natural little dams. By the simple device of plowing and cultivating around the hill, for example, each furrow, each harrow scratch, becomes in effect a small dam or terrace. On steeper slopes somewhat more elab orate methods may be needed, such as forestation, terracing, strip crop ping, etc. Other segments of the national land use program may be made to contribute to ?ood control. Eroded submarginal farm land that is contributing to ?ood ?ows may be purchased and retired from cultivation, and misused forested lands may be acquired for ?ood control and other public purposes.
Thus the ?ood-control program does not become a new program of the Department of Agriculture in the sense that new types of activities are undertaken. It presents no new technical problems to the Depart ment, and requires no new agency to set up to carry out the purposes of the ?ood-control acts. Existing bureaus of the Department are already equipped to go ahead with various phases of the program. The ?ood-control programs require in their upstream phases, however, com plete coordination of all land use programs, and reemphasize the inter dependence of the Department's many and varied activities.
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