WATER 121 



trict failed to pay their debt, the county was then faced with 

 the necessity of finding the money to pay it. After all, they had 

 guaranteed it. But the counties were depending on the in' 

 creased production in the drained area to provide them with 

 enough tax revenue to pay all of their debt. In many cases there 

 was no such revenue forthcoming. 



Some of the counties were now faced with bankruptcy. 

 This would mean that all people to whom the county owed 

 money would have to be satisfied with a small fraction of what 

 they had lent. However, the chief creditor of the Minnesota 

 counties was the State of Minnesota. If the counties went into 

 bankruptcy, the county bonds owned by the state would be 

 practically useless. People would be wary of lending the State 

 of Minnesota money, since so much of Minnesota's money was 

 invested in bad county bonds. Therefore, the state, in order to 

 protect its credit, has paid the money owed by the counties for 

 drainage. This has kept the counties from bankruptcy. 



The result is that the Minnesota drainage projects have been 

 paid for by all the taxpayers of Minnesota. A lot of these areas 

 are now being returned to wild'life refuges; but when you re' 

 member that in order to acquire these sanctuaries, the tax 

 payers had to pay the cost first of draining them, and then the 

 cost of filling them up again, you can see that this is a rather 

 expensive aid to wild life. 



THE ARID WEST 



Between the hundredth meridian and the Cascade Range, 

 the problems of water are the reverse of what they are in the 

 humid East. The East is trying to find an efficient way of 

 handling an abundant supply of rainfall. The arid West must 

 find ways to distribute wisely a very limited supply of rainfall. 



One of the chief supplies of water in the Middle West is the 

 great Dakota artesian basin. This is a reservoir of underground 

 water that has been stored in the porous sub'soils since the 



