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IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCE 
endure the loss ? Geographically, how long would it take to rob us of our 
richest heritage? Where these ditches run into rivers, the effects are 
not so readily observed, but they are none the less there. In one other 
region, where you look from our point of vantage over into the water- 
shed of a neighboring river, you see an unusual flood following each 
more than ordinarily heavy rainfall, this flood covering but a short sec- 
tion of the river, measuring from head to mouth. Above and below, no 
floods. This strip of fifteen or twenty miles, being inundated after each 
heavy rain, is unfit for farming, but is dotted with excellent farm build- 
ings and groves. The rest of the story, to explain, was told me by- a leg- 
islator, at Des Moines, last winter : 
‘‘Five drainage ditches run into our little river within a short dis- 
tance of each other. These drainage ditches are all open ditches and it 
seems that they have washed so much mud down into the river that the 
channel is choked for several miles. Now, every time a heavy rainfall 
comes, the lands below, for ten or fifteen miles, are flooded, whereas 
formerly, floods did not occur more frequently than once in fifteen or 
twenty years, and it was seldom then that these were destructive to crops. 
Now it is nearly impracticable to farm the lands in this section of the 
valley and my people are asking me to introduce a special bill to secure 
them relief.” 
Before we finally alight from the balloon, to study these problems 
more closely, we must admit that our friend, the reclamation service en- 
gineer, has suggested something of great value to us. In the reclama- 
tion project of Harrison and Monona Counties, the Little Sioux River 
does meet some of the conditions to which his plan will apply. Numerous 
V-shaped valleys, carrying at their bottoms small streams of clear water, 
help to make the system of the Little Sioux River much different from 
that of the Des Moines, the Iowa or the Cedar headwaters. These V- 
shaped valleys are of small value, agriculturally, and when broken 
by the plow wash readily into the streams, choking them and destroying 
their value for drainage purposes, making marsh and swamp lands of 
the once beautiful valley floor. The lands that would be lost by the con- 
struction of reservoirs to hold back the water rushing down in flood 
times to overflow the channels, would be comparatively small. A half- 
million dollar program, such as has been earried out in the Harrison- 
Moiiona Ditch, had it been expended in constructing dams, creating res- 
ervoirs and protecting river channels against flood waters and providing 
an equable flow of water in the river channel would have enabled the en- 
gineers to calculate definitely what channel conditions could be main- 
tained, by a certain given water flow, which could easily be determined. 
