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Show -76- "a . « to enable any State to cooperate with any other State or States, or with the United States, for the protection of the watersheds of navigable streams and to appoint a commission for the acquisition of lands for the purpose of conserving the navigability of navigable rivers «'!157 And not long after this prognostic enactment of the national legislature, the United States Supreme Court definitely set at rest all doubt about the supremacy of public rights in navigable streams, the beds of which rest techni- cally in private ownership, by declaring that ' "The flow of the stream of a navigable river. . • (is) in no sense private property, and there is no room for judicial review, at the instance of a private owner of the banks of the stream, of a deter- mination of Congress that such flow is needed for the improvement of 1 navigation.1* "Private ownership of running water in a great navigable stream is inconceivable." "Even if the act declaring the entire flow of a navigable stream is necessary for navigation provides for the sale of surplus power, the act is still a taking for the purposes of navigation and not for a commercial use." ... . "If the primary object is a legitimate taking there is no. ob- . jectioh to the usual disposition of what may be a possible surplus of power.nl58 While Congress and the Suppeme Court were thus repledging their fidelity to navigation as the generally dominant use of American waterways, the last 157 'Act of March 1, 1911, c. 186, 36 Stat, at L. 961. This general act evidences a growing comprehension by Congress that the waters of the arid west are insufficient for unimpaired navigability and the primary uses of the region at one and the same time* IS 8 United States v« Chandler-Dunbar Water Power Co., 229 U.S. 53, 33; S. Ct. 667, 57 L. Ed. IO63 (1913), The quotations in the text are from the, head- notes; other headnotes statei "The technical title to the beds of navigable rivers' of the United States is either in the States in which the..rivers are situated or in the riparian owners, depending upon local law;" and "Upon the admission of Michigan as a State into the Union the bed of the St. Mary1 s River passed to the State; under the law of Michigan a conveyance of' land borderiiig upon a navigable river carries title to the middle thread." The title of all such owners is qualified, and is'subject to the absolute power b;f. Congress over the improvement of navigable rivers. ,' <*..,. "The local law also controls the title of the United'States as'proprietor of riparian lands on non-navigable streams. Scott v. Latti^, 227 U.S. 229, 33 Sup. Ct. 21)2, 57 L. Ed. 1+90, kk L.R.A. (N.S.) 107 (1913), rev'g 17 Idaho, 506, 107 Pac. kl (I9IO) (Snake River); Donnelly v. United States, 228 U.S. 214.3, |
