452 DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FLORIDA CANAL

 "The consensus of opinion of that part of the shipping industry with which
 contact has been established in the preparation of this study appears to be that
 the probable cost of building the projected waterway is not justified through
 any benefits which might thereby accrue to the cargo or the vessel The signifi
 cancer of this is that it rests primarily upon the considered opinion of the prin-
 cipal and naturally most interested group, namely, the tanker trade."
 Mr. President, the question always inevitably arises in the minds of those who
 contemplate this interesting problem, why would they not use the canal if it
 were in existence? Let the Department of Commerce answer that question for
 itself.
 "A significant question which has been generally raised relates to the length
 of time a vessel would be confined to restricted waters. It has been pointed
 out by ship operators that the proposed waterway would be practically twice as
 long as the world's longest canal-the Suez-and that roughly 36 to 40 hours
 would be required to move a vessel from open water to open water over this
 distance. The question reflects directly the reluctance of those responsible for
 the operation of ships to have them confined to restricted waters."
 Mr. President, it is impossible to drive a ship operator into restricted water
 by any fiat of Congress or by any dream respecting the Florida canal. Because
 of many factors and many elements, the cost of operating ships in restricted
 waters is greater than the cost of operating ships in unrestricted waters. When
 the ship operators of this country almost unanimously testify that they would
 not use the canal even if it were available, I submit we are entitled to say they
 probably know what they are talking about, and that the net result of their
 testimony and evidence is infinitely more reliable than the hypothetical calcu-
 lations of somebody who sat in a swivel chair down Pensylvania Avenue and
 counted all the ships he found on the ocean off Florida and in Gulf waters
 during a period of 12 months.
 Mr. President, I desire to refer to only one other phase of this matter, and I
 feel required to do so with apologies to the senior Senator from Florida
 because of the almost countless messages from central and southern Florida
 which have poured in upon me during the last 2 or 8 weeks, as they did during
 our previous debate, namely, that their viewpoint may be submitted to the
 Senate.
 I will not undertake to say-it would be presumptuous if I did-what the
 State of Florida thinks about the Florida canal I do not presume upon the
 prerogatives of my able friend the senior Senator from Florida, but I think I
 owe it to those of his people who have asked that their viewpoint be submitted
 that it should be submitted, and I say to the Senate that it is their opinion,
 rightly or wrongly, it is their conviction, that if this gash is cut across the
 northern end of Florida, it will sever the main water artery, and it will either
 destroy or tremendously endanger and injure the ground-water supply of those
 areas.
 The Senator from Florida is entitled to answer me by saying that upon this
 question the Presidential board of review, to which I have previously referred,
 has said that its considered view is that there is no such menace. The fact
 remains that we are guessing, at best, because there are equally reliable and
 profound engineers who put to themselves the responsibility of asserting that
 the construction of the proposed canal would result in incomparable damages
 to central and southern Florida.
 Dr. Henry S. Sharp, geologist of Columbia University, has asserted:
 "All geologists unite in predicting that the canal will cause some damage to
 the water supply, while a considerable number believe that it will prove to be
 a textbook example of the large-scale destruction of water resources by artificial
 interference with underground flow."
 Since I used that quotation in the first debate I have had a reasonably long
correspondence with Professor Sharp, and he has submitted to me a supple-
mentary brief, in which he specifically sustains his own conclusion that we are
put upon notice that we proceed at our peril so far as this water problem is
concerned.
 The United States Geological Survey itself says:
 "To summarize, there appears to be no reasonable doubt that serious adverse
effects will be produced upon the important underground-water supplies of the
Ocala limestone in a wide zone extending outward from the canal line by the
construction of a sea-level canal along route 13-B."
 Mr. President, I do not know whether there will be resultant jeopardy or
not, but I am put upon notice, and so are other Senators, that there can be