REPORT OF BOARD OF CONSULTING ENGINEERS, PANAMA CANAL.


works be allowed for on the same basis as corresponding works in the Board's plans the total cost of the entire project B, without adding any percentage for contingencies or other allowances, will approximate about $160,000,000. To this must be added a large but indeterminate sum for the great extent of country flooded by the terminal lakes, particularly Lake Chagres or Lake Bohio if Gatun rather than Bohio be adopted for the location of the dam creating the summitlevel lake. This inundated land includes a large portion of the most valuable lands in the Canal Zone and its near vicinity. It would include many villages along the line of the railroad between Mindi and La Boca, besides lands devoted to grazing and dairy purposes as well as.many banana plantations. It is quite impossible at this time to estimate the damages which the United States Government would have to pay for these submerged lands, but if past experiences in this field are any guide in making this estimate the sum would be very large. This question is also complicated by the doubtful validity of titles of many parcels of land claimed to be owned by private parties.
 The land damages alluded to do not cover the lands which would be required for the regulating lakes at Gamboa and above that point on the Chagres River. While compensation would have to be made for these damages, that district is comparatively uninhabited and the amount of compensation would be relatively small; but this is an outlay practically common to all projects in which the control of the Chagres is to be effected at Gamboa or at points above.
 The extended examination which the Board has given to Mr. Bates's project B fails to indicate that the work embraced by it can be completed for a sum much less than an amount nearly 50 per cent in excess of his estimate of $134,000,000, including the additional cost for the outer breakwater in Limon Bay and the same 20 per cent for contingencies, sanitation, and policing used in the other estimates of this Board. There can, therefore, be no material economy in the adoption of this plan.
 At Obispo, where the Chagres cuts the canal line, Mr. Bates introduces a feature which he calls the Obispo triangle, designed to divide the flood waters of the Chagres entering the canal into two equal portions, one to flow through the canal prism toward Panama and the other toward Colon. .The accomplishment of this result is practically an impossibility.
 The assumption is unwarrantable that a large volume of water introduced at the middle point of a channel over 20 miles long, which in the dry season is an ordinary canal and which in the rainy season receives lateral contributions varying with the locus of local downpour, will automatically divide itself into two equal volumes flowing in opposite directions.
 Water levels will determine the flow at the central point, and local deposits with erosions caused by the excessive discharges will completely destroy the conditions necessary for the equal and opposite flows which he assumes.
 That some of the waters, the quantity to be determined by experience, would seek exit to the south through the canal prism is probable, and the sea-level plan contemplates such a southern diversion, but it is not claimed that it would be automatic and equal. As the distance to the Pacific is less than to the Caribbean the hydraulic gradient will be steeper, and the flow in the sea-level canal would be controlled by the regulating sluices proposed; but the diversion of any part of the Chagres flow to the Pacific is not an essential feature of said plan.
 Furthermore the Board believes that the proposed method of control of the Chagres, by a number of small reservoirs at Gamboa and above that point on the river, will be less effective and more expensive to maintain than that resulting from the construction of a single larger reservoir with a suitable dam at Gamboa. It is the further judgment of the Board that the proposed designs for the dams, dikes, or barrages proposed to be constructed at La Boca, Mindi, Gatun, or Bohio do not show the incorporation of such features of construction as will give reasonable assurance of their stability or efficiency for the purposes contemplated, and that a proper provision for those features would greatly swell the costs indicated by Mr. Bates.
 Again, Mr. Bates has outlined no method and has apparently given no consideration to such procedures as would be required to transform the work executed under his project B to a sea-level canal, nor has he made any estimates of cost whatever for such transformation. It is


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