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.. THE FOUNTAIN RIVER FLOOD PROBLEM Page 6 The 1943 Corps of Engineers report on a flood-control survey of the "Fountaine Que Bouille River and its Tributaries" (House Document 189, Reference 7), on the basis of which the Templeton Gap Floodway was authorized, discusses this problem at some length. A more recent report from the Albuquerque U. S. Engineer District on the June, 1965 Arkansas River flood (Ref- erence 24) reiterates the difficulties of financial and econ- omic justification for "extensive levee projects" or "multiple purpose reservoirs" on Arkansas River tributaries in Colorado under existing cost-benefit requirements and financing capa- bilities. It should be noted that the floodway through Colorado Springs, which could be considered an exception to these generalizations, was built with WPA financing and hence was not subject to strict cost-benefit evaluation. 3) Heavy over-appropriation of Fountain flows for irriga tion. The first two factors have tended to make engineering protection and control works infeasible for local governments and pri- vate interests, and have also resulted in low cost-benefit ratio calculations by Federal agencies for projects inves- . tigated under Congressional regulations. The third has made relief through the planning of multiple-purpose impoundments virtually impossible under existing conditions. In the face of the five-fold increase in the tally of 1965 flood damages over those for 1935 cited previously, this sit- uation appears anomalous. Even allowing for devaluation of the dollar, the increase is still two and a half fold, and the total devaluated bill of damages is about two-thirds that for the historical 1921 flood, at Pueblo, on the basis of which the various main-stem works have been justified.