aOVERXMEXTAL WORK FOR COUXTRY LIFE 411 



ments of the water-courses. . . . The tendency in 

 the construction of county drains in Michigan has 

 too often been to limit the size and depth in order 

 that they might be of a type readily constructed by 

 teams and scrapers or, as in many cases, by hand." 

 This necessitates reconstruction with all the legal 

 performance that must accompany it.^ 



]\Iiller and Simons compute that, under the pres- 

 ent Michigan drainage law, al)out 9,300 drains have 

 been constructed, whose aggregate length is approxi- 

 mately 20,000 miles and cost approximately $18,- 

 000,000. The law provides for the payment of costs 

 by the beneficiaries in not to exceed three install- 

 ments, and the investigators compute that some 60 

 per cent of the drains has been paid for in one in- 

 stallment and the remainder largely in not to ex- 

 ceed two installments. Miller and Simons point out 

 that the rights of property owners are amply pro- 

 tected in the Michigan drain law, and that exces- 

 sive costs have usually been avoided and litigation 

 almost wholly so. On the other hand it has fre- 

 quently, in a proposed drainage project, been impos- 

 sible to secure the requisite majority of interested 

 property owners' signatures to the petition request- 

 ing the establishment of a drain ; and the inability 

 of the drain commissioner, as against the petitioners, 

 to determine the route and area of the drainage dis- 

 trict, has operated to the detriment of a^ project 

 that would better have been constructed on other 

 * Miller and Simons: "Drainage in Michigan," 28. 



