Project installation complete on date shown; special evaluation of the effect of flood-size storms will

continue for a limited number of years.

Project not authorized, no local sponsor.

Terminated before completion at sponsor's request.

Terminated Dec. 31, 1956.

'Terminated June 30, 1957.

21494-58-pt. 3-24

Practical problems confront watershed project sponsors

Sponsors of watershed projects among other things are required to provide all necessary easements and rights-of-way for structural measures to be constructed under each watershed work plan. Sponsors are often confronted with unexpected refusals to grant easements or with complex problems of land ownership and absentee owners requiring considerable time and expense to secure the needed approvals. Delay in clearing all necessary easements for a structure can disrupt the work schedules seriously.

For example, more than 200 easements are needed for the 42 floodwater retarding and other structures in the Big Wewoka Creek watershed of Oklahoma. Field activities of Service employees have been suspended in the Chimacum Creek watershed in Jefferson County, Wash., until the sponsors secure the needed easements and rights-of-way and make the necessary financial arrangements. Work on the Ball Creek, N. Y., pilot watersheds was terminated on December 21, 1956, with none of the planned structural work accomplished because the sponsors found it impossible to secure the needed easements. One property owner in the Clear Creek watershed of Jackson County, Ala., has delayed the starting of work on the planned 4.6 miles of stream channel improvement by his refusal to grant or sell the necessary easement. The sponsors now propose to take legal steps to secure this easement.

The Payne County portion of the Long Branch watershed in Oklahoma failed to be annexed to a conservancy district because of landowners opposition to conferring eminent domain rights. Securing easements and rights-of-way is the soil conservation district's biggest problem as project sponsors. State legislation specifically granting the power of eminent domain to watershed associations and soil conservation districts has been proposed or enacted in many States as a result of this common problem.

The majority of the 42 watershed-protection and flood-prevention projects authorized for operations by June 30, 1957 under Public Law 566, as amended, are well underway. Local sponsoring organizations in most of these new projects are accepting their responsibilities and moving ahead rapidly. The sponsoring organizations are developing contracting procedures, receiving construction bids, securing necessary easements and letting contracts with little delay. In many watersheds land-treatment work, already well advanced, has been accelerated even more through the organized efforts of the sponsors and other cooperating agencies and organizations. A few examples of progress in Public Law 566 projects follow:

Hatch Valley Arroyos, N. Mer.-The Hatch Valley Arroyos watershed project, sponsored by the Caballo Soil Conservation District covers 14,500 acres in Dona Ana County, N. Mex. Federal participation in the installation of the planned work was authorized in June 1956. Three of the 6 planned floodwater-detention structures were scheduled to be completed by August 1957 and the other 3 during the spring of 1958. The completed project will protect some 1,500 acres of highly productive irrigated cropland, the community of Garfield, irrigation canals, and other property from flood runoff originating in the six small tributary watersheds. Land-treatment measures in these small tributaries will be installed and maintained by the Bureau of Land Management. The entire project is estimated to cost $230,000 and is scheduled for completion in 1961.

Silver Creek, S. Dak.-The Silver Creek watershed project, covering 32 square miles in Minnehaha County, was approved for operations on March 12, 1957, as the first project authorized under Public Law 566 in South Dakota. The project is planned for completion in 1961 at a total cost of $383,600, of which about $122,850 will be non-Federal cost.

Of the 130 farmers in the watershed, 81 were cooperating with the Minnehaha Soil Conservation District which is sponsoring the watershed project. More than 45 percent of the planned land-treatment measures are already applied. most significant of which are 38 of the needed 163 miles of terraces and 215 of the needed 285 acres of waterways development. Special emphasis is being given to the installation of the balance of the needed land-treatment measures above the six planned floodwater-retarding structures by priority cost-sharing assistance through the agricultural conservation program, soil conservation district assistance, an intensive educational campaign and the cooperation of officials of the city of Sioux Falls. A recent 6-inch rainstorm demonstrated the effectiveness of conservation land-treatment measures already on the land and created even more interest in pushing all phases of the watershed project ahead to completion. The first floodwater-retarding structure is scheduled to be installed during the 1958 fiscal year and the next 2 in 1959. More than 75 percent of the planned land-treatment measures will be installed above these structures before construction is started. The 13.3 miles of channel improvement work planned will be constructed after the floodwater is controlled by the land treatment and structural work above the stream channels.

This

Harmony Creek watershed, Iowa.-The Harmony Creek watershed project covers 3,100 acres of privately owned land in Harrison County, Iowa. small tributary of the Boyer River has contributed tremendous volumes of sediment to the Missouri River system as a result of the sheet erosion and severe gullying of the deep loessial soils. Approved for operations on March 19, 1956, the project is scheduled for completion in the fiscal year 1959. All 24 of the farmers in the project area are cooperators with the Harrison County Soil Conservation District, and have already applied 85 percent of the needed conservation land-treatment practices. Easements have been cleared for the six planned floodwater-retarding structures and all of them were either under construction or invitations to bid scheduled to be issued by October 1, 1957. Total cost of the project is now estimated at $202,810 of which $145,590 is the estimated Federal share.

Saar Creek watershed, Washington.-The Saar Creek watershed project, covering 17.5 square miles in Whatcom County, Wash., was approved for operations on February 14, 1957. Structural work planned consists of 13.3 miles of channel improvement in Saar Creek, Mud Slough, and the Sleasman ditches. The total rroject cost is estimated to be $348,600, of which $178,124 is the Federal share. The Whatcom County Soil Conservation District and Drainage Improvement District No. 15 of the Whatcom County sponsor the project. The costs of the agricultural water-management benefits for the drainage values of the channel work are shared by the local sponsors. All necessary easements and rightsof-way have been recorded and construction contracts were awarded in September 1957. The plan contemplates that all construction will be completed by September 1959.

Stony Brook watershed, New Jersey. The 48-square-mile Stony Brook water hed project in Mercer and Hunterdon Counties, N. J., was approved for operations in October 1956. It is designed to reduce sedimentation of Carnegie Lake to a minimum by acceleration of flood-prevention land-treatment work and the construction of nine debris basins. Irrigation water will be stored in one structure. After considerable delay because of a State proposal for a water-supply reservoir on the main stem of Stony Brook in the project area,

consideration is now being given by the sponsors to revision of the work plan to include some provisions for storage of public-water supplies in multiple-purpose structures.

Watershed project demonstrates substantial benefits in Arkansas

An interim progress report of the watershed-program evaluation of the Six Mile Creek pilot watershed project in Arkansas, covering the period 1954 through 1956, was published jointly by the Agricultural Research Service and Soil Conservation Service in July 1957. Benefits of the 6 floodwater-retarding structures installed prior to spring storms of 1955 and the 14 floodwater-retarding structures operating during 1956 storms were reported showing an estimated reduction in flood damages of $8,550. An estimated total benefit of $25,005 would have resulted during these 2 years if the entire planned program had been completed and damages from floodwater and sediment would have been only about $2,315. Benefits for values other than for flood prevention were not evaluated in the report but are substantial. They include increased farm returns from installation of land-treatment measures and varied uses of water stored in the sediment pools. Heavy rains in the spring of 1957 were not included in the published evaluation but are estimated to have reduced flood damages by 50 percent with the planned program about 80 percent installed. Oklahoma project passes flood tests

The Double Creek pilot watershed project in Washington and Osage Counties, Okla., was tested by six rainstorms of unusual size and duration between April 19 and June 11, 1957. Each of the six storms would have caused severe flood damage had the project improvement measures not been installed. Before these storms about 70 percent of the needed land-treatment measures had been applied to the land and all of the 6 planned floodwater-retarding structures were in place. There are 40 landowners with about 2,250 acres of flood plain along Double Creek and its tributaries which have flooded frequently in the past. No flooding actually occurred from the storms of April 19, April 23, May 16, and May 21 although from 1,200 to 1,770 acres would have been flooded by similar storms prior to the project installations.

During the severe May 26 storm, with the soil already saturated following more than 8.4 inches of rain from 4 preceding storms, flooding was limited to about 1.000 acres. Without the installed program, flooding would have doubled and water would have been much deeper and caused even more damage. The greatest amount of downstream flooding occurred from the storm of June 11, when from 4.5 to 6.7 inches of rain fell, the soil was again presaturated and all structures were filled near capacity from previous storms. Detailed evaluation of the effect of the program in this storm was not available but under these extreme conditions flood-reduction benefits were substantial. Although the extreme drought of the past 4 years have complicated the application of landtreatment measures, local people are convinced that the grass management, terraces, farm ponds, and proper land use are effective in preventing erosion and reducing and holding back the damaging floodwaters. Properly managed native grass on 1 of the ranches took up water 3 times faster than where the grasslands had been abused.

West Virginia watershed project nears completion

More than 2 miles of channel improvement and 7 of the 8 planned floodwaterretarding structures have been completed in the 5,325 acre Salem Fork watershed pilot project in Harrison County, W. Va. The remaining flood-prevention dam will be installed and needed land-treatment work completed in 1958. Two intense rainstorms in 1956 demonstrated the effectiveness of even a partially completed flood-prevention program to the satisfaction of the local people. The multiple-purpose reservoir in Dog Run, a tributary to Salem Fork, has provided plenty of good water to the residents of the city of Salem as well as providing effective floodwater-detentiton values. Floods have damaged up to 220 acres of agricultural land and 60 acres of the city of Salem in the past. Local enthusiasm for the project is high. Reforestation of the steep slopes is proceeding much faster than was planned. Conservation farm planning has been completed on 86 farms covering 5,125 acres. The final establishment of fencing for grazing control, contour farming, strip cropping, and other needed measures on these farms in the watershed will continue under the West Fork Soil Conservation District program with priority consideration for agricultural conservation program cost-sharing assistance after the project is closed in 1958.