THE NATIONAL ASPECT OF SWAMP DRAINAGE 9 



In the light of the foregoing conception of drainage let us look at some 

 of our swamps. Beginning with the most famous, the Dismal Swamp. 

 We find that it occupies parts of Virginia and North Carolina. A little 

 farther south, there are those areas lying on both sides of the North and 

 South Carolina State lines. The northern part naturally drains to the 

 southern part. The Savannah Kiver on the northern border, and the Apa- 

 lachicola on the southwestern border of Georgia, have great swamp and over- 

 flow areas in South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida. In southern Georgia, 

 too, there are the Okefinokee swamps which, if drained, must have their out- 

 lets across the State of Florida. The Tombigbee Valley in Mississippi lies 

 above the same valley in Alabama. The Pearl River bottoms occupy parts 

 of Mississippi and Louisiana. The St. Francis basin lies in Missouri and 

 Arkansas; while the swamp areas of the Red River of the North occupy 

 Minnesota and North Dakota. Instances like this could be multiplied greatly. 

 Wherever we look we find swamp conditions that cover land in two or more 

 contiguous states. In other words, the greater part of our swamp drainage 

 problems are interstate. 



INTERSTATE PROBLEM OP DRAINAGE 



What are state boundaries? They are lines established by man t 

 mark off separate legal jurisdictions. They are placed where they are by 

 virtue of conquest, discovery, agreement, or otherwise. Except when they 

 occupy the crest of a drainage divide, they do not conform to any natural 

 division, and natural problems and necessities are in no wise changed when 

 state lines cross any particular basin or swamp. The natural laws governing 

 the drainage of swamps were established long centuries before such things 

 as state lines were conceived by man. Can it be believed that the drainage 

 necessities in the St. Francis basin, for example, are altered in the slightest 

 degree by the fact that the people have thrown the Arkansas-Missouri 

 boundary across this basin? Of course such an assumption is preposterous. 

 And yet, on the two sides of that boundary line there are separate jurisdic- 

 tions, different laws and processes, and there is not even a remote probability 

 that under present conditions there can be any unity of action on the two 

 sides to comply with the unalterable nature requirements. Missourians, with 

 commendable enterprise, have drained large areas of their land. The people 

 of Arkansas must tax themselves to take care of that surplus water. When 

 they reclaim their portion of the St. Francis basin, a part of their cost will 

 be for the proper disposal of the water which the people of Missouri have 

 thrown down upon them. Is it not clear that the logical and the just way 

 to have handled the St. Francis problem would have been to drain that basin 

 as a unit, each owner, without respect to local jurisdiction, paying his share 

 of the whole system cost? 



When we assess benefits for a city sewerage system we do not charge 

 the owner of land located near the outlet a larger price than the one located 

 at the head of the system, merely because the sewer in the street adjoining 

 the lower land is larger and laid deeper than that serving the upper lands. 

 We assess the owner at the upper end for his proportionate share of the cost 



