DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FLORIDA CANAL


175


to the subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee on the occasion of your
appearance before that body on January 17, I shall greatly appreciate it if you
will let me have the following additional information.
 1. Paragraph 1 of the resolution proposes an inquiry into the nature and
extent of expenditures to be made from emergency relief funds, and subsequent
expenditures for construction and maintenance to be made from regular funds.
As to relief funds, I believe it is agreed that the amounts, if any, to be ex-
pended on this project rest solely with the President. But I should like to ask
you whether or not you think that there has been sufficient competent survey,
examination, and study of this project to determine its construction and mainte-
nance costs with the same degree of accuracy as in the case of other river
and harbor improvements in general heretofore approved and constructed.
 2. Paragraph 2 of the resolution proposes an inquiry into the sufficiency of
 plans and information to determine whether the canal should be a sea-level or
 a lock canal, and whether it should be 30 or 35 feet in depth. Do you or do
 you not think that there has been gathered a sufficiency of such plans and
 information to make such a determination?
 3. Paragraph 3 of the resolution proposes an inquiry into the sufficiency of
 authentic information to determine whether the canal will contaminate the
 ground-water supply of the adjacent areas. Do you or do you not think that
 there has been gathered a sufficiency of such information to make such a
 determination?
 4. Paragraph 4 of the resolution proposes an inquiry into the nature and
 extent of the available traffic to warrant the ultimate expenditure of between
 $140,00,000 and $200,000,000. Do you or do you not think that there has been
 sufficient investigation and examination made and sufficient data gathered to
 enable a decision to be made as to the amount of cost of the project which
 available traffic will justify?
 5. On the occasion of your appearance before the subcommittee on January
 17, Senator Vandenberg referred several times to certain answers from shipping
 concerns to a questionnaire sent out by the special board of survey for this
 project as being the economic justification of the project upon which the special
 board relied. Will you kindly advise me as to whether this is correct or not;
 and, if not, will you please let me know the usual factors which are studied,
 and which the special board of review presumably studied, in determining the
 economic justification of any such project, and show what relation to such gen-
 eral economic study as a whole such questionnaires to parties presumably inter-
 ested bear.
 Sincerely yours,
 Dm OAN U. FLBrom.



 DOCUMENT NO. 103 (FILES OF THE PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRA-
 TION), JANUARY 24, 1936

 COMMUNICATION FROM THE ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR OF PUBLIC
 WOnKS TO SENATOR VANDENBERG

 Under date of January 24, 1936, the following communication was
 addressed to Senator Vandenberg by Horatio B. Hackett, Assistant
 Administrator of Public Works:
 JANUABY 24, 1936.
 Hon. ArHau H. VANDmBraz,
 United States senate.
 MY DEAz SENATnO VANDENBw o: The Administrator has asked me to furnish
 you with all pertinent Public Works Administration reports relating to the
 trans-Florida canal (docket no. 139), which are transmitted herewith. For
 your further information I am summarizing below the chronological history of
 the application during its consideration by this Administration.
 1. An application (docket no. 139) to construct a ship canal from the Atlantic
 Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico across the northern part of Florida was transferred
 to the Public Works Administration from the Reconstruction Finance Corpo-
 ration on August 14, 1933. The application requested a loan only, but did not
 specify the amount (exhibit A). (The applicant originally had been a private