DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FLORIDA CANAL


 Senator FLrTHm I appreciate your concern about that, Mr.
Chairman, but of course we all have to submit more or less to the
advice of people who have made a study of this thing and who are
experts on the subject, and that is the reason the engineers have
proceeded so carefully. They have had this board appointed for this
very purpose. They have made their report and they will say there
will be no such damage as contemplated here at all. And they tell
me, my information is, these people around Bradenton get their water
supply within a distance-of 10 miles. How far is it from Bradenton
up here to the canal
 Mr. BUCKMAN. It is about a hundred and twenty-five miles.
 Senator FzTCHIR. Oh, it is much over a hundred miles south of
this canal. They cannot be affected by that canal in any way at all.
Their water supply comes from within a distance of 10 miles, from
lakes and rivers and everything else all around them.
 The CHAIMAN. But the question is, How do those lakes and rivers
get their water ?
 Senator FLxxIHEzc They do not get it from north Florida. They
 get it from the rain and natural conditions there.
 The CHAInaxA. Did you ever see any of this Florida snow, when
 you dig down and get into the sand, which contains the ground
 water? I don't know much about geology.
 Senator FLErrOa. They do not get their water supply from up in
 north Florida at all. They get it locally. They get it from the
 conditions there, from the rainfall. There is where they get their
 surplus water.
 But that is all a matter of discussion with our experts, and I do
 not think that is involved in this inquiry here. We have got to
 depend on the experts about this, and this board has already made
 this report that there will be no such damage, and the engineers are
 watching every step, all the effects that may be realized from the
 digging of this canal, and they will see that no harm is done to that
 south Florida region, to the region south of the canal, with respect
 to their water contamination or anything else. If any thing devel-
 ops like that they can put a stop to it. They can seal it up, seal up
 the outlets and whatnot. They can build a dam in front of Silver
 Springs. They will do whatever is necessary.
 The CHAIBMAN. If they do that, Senator, there is not any doubt
 it would relieve unemployment, because it would take all the cement
 that we could make in the next 10 years to seal the wall of that canal.
 Senator FLETCHE. Not seal the wall. Just an occasional leak or
 something like that. That can be done very often without very much
 cement either. That we can get into a little later. But the experts
 tell us that that does not cut any figure. As I understand, it can be
 remedied if it develops any possible danger.
 The situation with regard to the action of the P. W. A. is, as I
 understand it, they were concerned primarily with the revenues and
 the question of whether this would be a self-liquidating proposition
 at a loan of $115,000,000. They figure that it would not be safe for
 them and objected. The P. W. A. did not go into this question on
 the basis of a river and harbors improvement or a means of develop-
 ing commerce or the benefits incident to improvements to rivers and
 harbors generally. They went into the question of the financial
 operation here, whether they will be safe in making this loan or not.


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