William Howard Taft

“ Dean Shenehon, another engineer expert, says that, when the lake is at a mean height of 974, the Minnesota ditches are responsible for a permanent increase in the level of from 3 to 6 inches, say 4 inches, and that in time of flood, when the lake rises to 977, the ditches account for 10 inches. The varying estimates of these two principal witnesses for North Dakota do not seem to rest on definitely ascertained data. We have no government or other gaugings of the flow from the Mustinka into the lake before the cut-off was completed in 1915. ”

“ Minnesota in her answer admits the construction of the ditches for drainage and sanitation, but denies that they caused the overflow complained of, and avers that the flooding was due to unusual rainfall in the successive years of 1914, 1915, and 1916.
One owning land on a water course may by ditches and drains turn into it all the surface water that would naturally drain there, but he may not thus discharge into the water course more water than it has capacity to carry, and thus burden his lower neighbor with more than is reasonable. ”

“ The damage to the complainant in destruction of roads and bridges is alleged to be $5,000, and the damage to owners of the farms in destruction of crops and injury to the arable quality of their land, to be more than $1,000,000. A further allegation is that the ditch is likely at every period of high water to cause overflows as injurious as those complained of. The prayer is for an order enjoining the continued use of the ditches and a decree against the state of Minnesota for the damages sustained by the complainant state and its farmers. ”

“ The right of a state as parens patriae to bring suit to protect the general comfort, health, or property rights of its inhabitants threatened by the proposed or continued action of another state by prayer for injunction is to be differentiated from its lost power as a sovereign to present and enforce individual claims of its citizens as their trustee against a sister state. For this reason the prayer for a money decree for the damage done by the floods of 1915 and 1916 to the farms of individuals in the Bois de Sioux valley is denied for lack of jurisdiction. ”

“ It needs no argument, in the light of these authorities, to reach the conclusion that, where one state by a change in its method of draining water from lands within its border increases the flow into an interstate stream, so that its natural capacity is greatly exceeded and the water is thrown upon the farms of another state, the latter state has such an interest as quasi sovereign in the comfort, health, and prosperity of her farm owners that resort may be had to this court for relief. ”

“ The Mustinka river reaches the lake at its northern end just beyond the region of its high banks and makes a delta walling off Mud Lake. The Bois de Sioux flows north and is a sluggish stream, with low marshy banks for 15 miles to a point opposite where the Rabbit river enters from the Minnesota side. Beyond that, its banks grow higher. It flows down the eastern side of its basin so that the Minnesota lowlands on its bank are of small area. ”

“ The farmers in the lower watersheds of the Five Mile and Twelve Mile creeks concluded that the state ditch, as it was called, was the cause of the flooding, and in a petition they asked the Legislature by further work to relieve them from danger of future overflows. ”

“ It has higher banks than the others and a more marked channel and rarely overflows.
The original Mustinka ditch was intended to drain farm lands in Grant county, east of Traverse county, and was built before 1900 from a point in the Upper Mustinka near the town of Norcross in a westerly direction along the valley of that stream some 7 miles, cutting off its curves and crossing the Five Mile creek south of its confluence with the Mustinka, and emptying at right angles into Twelve Mile creek. There was a great flood, due to a succession of wet years, in 1906 and 1907. ”