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5 TOWARD A UNIFORM TECHNIQUE FOR DETERMINING FLOOD FLOW FREQUENCIES In a letter of September 10, 1966, the Executive Director informed the Hydrology Committee that the Council had assigned it responsibil- ity for developing a uniform technique for the determination of flood flow frequencies. The Hydrology Committee of the Council consists of technical staff members of the Federal departments represented in the Council and of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Committee devotes its efforts to technical matters in hydrology and has published many hydrologic bulletins that are nationally used.. The Council's assignment was made in conformance with Recom- mendation 2 of the report by the Task Force on Federal Flood Control Policy, "A Unified National Program for Managing Flood Los ses. "1..1 Recommendation 2 called for the establishment of a panel to examine methods of frequency analysis and to provide a set of techniques based on the best known hydrological and statistical procedures. In a letter of October 20, 1967, the Chairman of the Hydrology Committee submitted the Committee's report to the Council. The letter and report contained (i) a resume of the Committee's activities in this field, (H) recommendations regarding a technique of flood flow frequency analysis for gaged areas, (Hi) an outline of the recommended base method of analysis, (iv) appropriate tables of constants for use with the base method, and (v) a discussion of further and immediate problems requiring the Committee's attention in this field. The Committee's letter and report were based on the report of the Work Group on Flood Flow Frequency Analysis, an ad hoc work group es- tablished by the Committee. Two professional statisticians were employed as technical advisors to the group. The group's main findings were that of six methods tested, three fitted the data well and showed no bias. The recommended base method is one of these three. In its meeting of October 25, 1967, the Water Resources Council accepted the Committee's report and recommendations and agreed that they should be published. l.J House Document No. 465, 89th Congress, 2nd Session.