the buildings on such property if such demolition appears to be in the best interests of the Government. In many cases, these buildings, such as old post-office buildings, are entirely worthless and unsuitable for use for any purpose; and the land on which they are situated can be leased or sold more advantageously without the buildings than if the buildings were still standing. No such building is to be demolished if the Secretary of the Interior deems it to be an historic building of national significance within the meaning of the act of August 21, 1935. Section 3 of the bill makes changes in the present law which are appropriate because its administration has been transferred from the Procurement Division in the Treasury Department to the Public Buildings Administration in the Federal Works Agency. The amendments recommended by the committee are clerical in nature and do not affect the purposes of the bill as it passed the House. The legislation is favored by the Public Buildings Administration, which will administer its provisions. о 76TH CONGRESS 3d Session SENATE { REPORT No. 1365 OMNIBUS RIVER AND HARBOR BILL-NAVIGATION APRIL 3 (legislative day, MARCH 4), 1940.-Ordered to be printed Mr. BAILEY, from the Committee on Commerce, submitted the following REPORT [To accompany H. R. 6264] The Committee on Commerce, to which was recommitted the bill (H. R. 6264) authorizing the construction, repair, and preservation of certain public works on rivers and harbors, and for other purposes, having considered the same, reports thereon with amendments and, as so amended, recommends that the bill do pass. The House bill has been amended by the Committee on Commerce so as to be confined strictly to navigation projects. All items pertaining to flood control or power development, or both, have been stricken from the House bill. These amendments are indicated in the bill, as reported, by line type. The navigation projects of the House have been left in the bill. The Senate committee has included additional navigation projects and these are indicated by italic type. The House Committee on Flood Control is preparing a flood-control bill and the Senate Committee on Commerce considers in view of this that all flood-control bills should be withheld pending the action of the House on the flood-control bills. Each project proposed to be authorized has been surveyed under the supervision of the Chief of Engineers of the War Department and each project has been approved by the Chief of Engineers without qualification, except the largest project in the bill known as the Waterway connecting the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers, fully described on page 44 of this report, and the project on the Columbia River, Oreg. and Wash., construction of the Umatilla Dam, described on page 63 of this report. The estimated cost of the project for the Waterway connecting the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers is $66,000,000 and the maintenance cost estimated is $500,000 per year. This project has been approved by the Board of Engineers, but the Chief of Engineers qualifies his approval with the statement that the "intangible or indirect benefits must be considered in addition to the direct savings in transportation costs in order that this project will show a substantial excess of benefits over costs," and he adds that these intangible or indirect benefits "are difficult to evaluate," and that they appear "to be questions falling within the realm of statesmanship to which the Congress can best assign the proper values." Relative to the construction of the Umatilla Dam, the Chief of Engineers in his report recommends "that the general plans presented herein for the initial and ultimate development of the Columbia and Snake Rivers between the pool of the Bonneville Dam and Lewiston, Idaho, be accepted by the Congress as a general guide for future development of the waterway * * Special attention is called to the provision in the bill (sec. 9) by which appropriations for the projects in the bill are not to be made available prior to July 1, 1941, and that the work on these projects shall be extended through a period of 7 years. Since the bill purports to authorize appropriations amounting to $231,090,950, the annual appropriation in contemplation is only one-seventh of this sum— that is, at the rate of less than $34,000,000 a year. In view of statements that there is outstanding an enormous amount of authorizations for river and harbor projects, attention is directed to the letter of the Chief of Engineers to the chairman of the Committee on Commerce dated June 6, 1939 (p. 75), which shows the amount required to complete authorized river and harbor projects necessary in the interests of commerce and navigation as $176,000,000. Excluding from this amount authorizations for construction of power units at Bonneville and Fort Peck there remains for river and harbor projects of immediate value to navigation and on which no substantial delay is expected in the fulfillment of conditions of local cooperation an authorization of $159,825,750, of which only approximately $5,000,000 is for projects on which work has not been initiated. The pending War Department civil functions appropriation bill for 1941 as passed by the House of Representatives included $24,300,000 for new work on river and harbor projects; this amount was increased by $25,000,000 by the subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate, thus making the amount now proposed in the pending appropriation bill $49,300,000. Should that bill be enacted, there would be available approximately $110,500,000 authori zation for future appropriation to complete work on active authorized river and harbor projects. This authority is less than has existed for many years and the present bill will restore a reasonable backlog for the operations of the Department. The only river and harbor authority remaining in addition to the foregoing is for projects on which a substantial delay in the fulfillment. of the conditions of local cooperation is anticipated, and those whose prosecution is not now justified in the interests of commerce or navigation, amounting to $49,746,300. No appropriation is pending nor expected in the near future for these latter projects. A list of projects especially relating to national defense will be found on page 80. ITEMIZATION OF PROJECTS Following is an itemized list of all the projects in the bill showing the initial costs, contributions, and maintenance. Each project is numbered on the left-hand side so that more details may be found in the analysis of section 1, which appears after this list. Thus, for the first project, "Northeast Harbor, Maine," which is numbered |