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After Mayor Thompson had left Washington, Chairman Reid's committee settled down to consider less spectacular phenomena, such as spillways, crevasses, levees and the main channel of the largest U. S. river. The planning of a national program began with requests for local relief. Representative Hull of Illinois put in a plea for stronger levees around Cairo, at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Others from southern Illinois asked that the gooseneck narrows in the Mississippi at Cairo be widened instead.
After Chairman Reid's state had had its say, Louisianians were heard on the desirability of utilizing the Atchafalaya River as a natural spillway, and of building other spillways, to carry the gathered volume of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico by short cuts above New Orleans.
Senator Elmer Thomas of Okla homa set forth that his state had suffered more property damage than any other from floods; that levee construction would scarcely affect Oklahoma; that the way to start controlling the Mississippi was by impounding its tributaries in reservoirs; that reservoirs affected agriculture and waterpower and should therefore not be a wholly Federal project. Senator Thomas proposed a Federal fund of ten millions, to be administered by the President in national disasters, and gave the Flood Control Committee a bill he had drawn to this effect.
While the Representatives were meeting, Senator Harry Bartow Hawes, Missouri Democrat, was busy enlisting the support of colleagues in both parties for a Missouri Plan of flood control. This plan provided for: a) five commissioners appointed by the President to govern flood control, navigation and conservation in the Mississippi Basin; b) appropriations of $100,000,000 per annum for ten years; c) a bond issue, such as built the Panama Canal and the Alaska Railway.
Unofficialdom said that Army's flood control report would recommend: 1) Standard levees from above Cairo, Ill., to the Mississippi mouth, 12 feet wide (instead of 8, as now) and higher than ever; 2) Illuminated national highways atop these levees; 3) Spillways at Poydras, La.; and down the Atchafalaya Basin; 4) Lateral levee control of large Mississippi tributaries; 5) No reforestation; 6) Costs, $500,000,000 to $575,000,000.