[COMMITTEE PRINT NO. 3] OF MICHIGAN MAR 24 1958 RELATIONSHIPS OF RIVER AND RELATED WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT HON. HENRY M. JACKSON, OF WASHINGTON (In Connection With S. Res. 248 of the 85th Congress) FEBRUARY 17, 1958 Printed for the use of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs 21490 UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1958 PURCHASED THROUGH DOC. EX. PROJECT MEMORANDUM OF TRANSMITTAL UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, February 11, 1958. To Members of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs: Attached is a letter to me from our colleague, Senator Henry M. Jackson, of Washington State, relating to his visit to the Soviet Union and his observations with respect to its progress and plans to overtake the United States industrially. I am especially impressed with Senator Jackson's observations on the progress the Soviet Union is making in installing hydroelectric plants that exceed the capacity at any dam in the United States. At Senator Jackson's request, the Library of Congress has prepared a study from Soviet sources of Soviet activity in the field of power generation. I consider Senator Jackson's personal observations on his visit to Soviet Russia and the material from the Library of Congress a major contribution to the review of the relationship of water development programs of the United States and Soviet Russia. This review is being conducted jointly by our committee and the Committee on Public Works at hearings opening Monday, February 17, at 10 a. m. in room 224, Senate Office Building, with Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney, of Wyoming, presiding. In the meantime, I am having a committee print made of Senator Jackson's letter and the report of the Library of Congress in the form of an addendum. JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman. 1 LETTER FROM SENATOR JACKSON Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1958. Chairman, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: A little more than a year ago, I visited the Soviet Union. I was struck with the determination of the Soviet leaders and their people to overtake the United States, industrially. Their boasts that they would accomplish this by the mid-1970's at first sounded hollow. But after my presputnik tour through thousands of miles of the Soviet Union I was impressed with the evidence of great progress. Particularly impressive was the Soviet advance in the field of hydroelectric power-one of the vital bases for industrial growth and strength. I personally inspected a dam at Stalingrad on the Volga River which, when completed in the near future, will have a generating capacity of 2,310,000 kilowatts-considerably greater than our own Grand Coulee Dam. Not far away and already in operation at Kuibyshev on the Volga is another dam larger than Grand Coulee. This dam's 2,100,000 kilowatts makes it-temporarily the world's largest single producer of hydroelectric power. Russian citizens and engineers to whom I talked were modest about these dams. For at Bratsk, on the Angara River in Siberia, the Russians in 1955 started to build a dam of 3.6 million kilowatts capacity. And at Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei River in Siberia, they have underway a dam of 4 million kilowatts capacity-double Grand Coulee. This is only a partial story of Soviet strides in developing the hydroelectric base that they need to make good their boast to catch up with us industrially in the next 20 years. Because I think it important that we know the full story, I have had the Library of Congress prepare from Soviet sources-a thorough study of Soviet activity in the field of power generation. I respectfully request that this material be published as a committee print in order that these facts may have the widest possible distribution among the Members of Congress and the public. Sincerely yours, HENRY M. JACKSON, 3 |