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Show 19 ployment of the commerce power for flood-control purposes, the Court said:61 But there is no constitutional reason why Congress or the courts should be blind to the engineering prospects of protecting the nation's arteries of commerce through control of the watersheds. There is no constitutional reason why Congress cannot, under the commerce power, treat the watersheds as a key to flood control on navi- gable streams and their tributaries. Nor is there a con- stitutional necessity for viewing each reservoir project in isolation from a comprehensive plan covering the en- tire basin of a particular river. Development of Power.-Another important purpose served by waters under the jurisdiction of Congress is the de- velopment of power. Here too, federal commerce authority may be appropriately invoked. It should be noted that as early as 1879 Congress empowered the Secretary of the Army to lease water power at Moline to a private company.62 Also, the Supreme Court in 1891 announced some of the rele- vant principles in the first Green Bay case, holding that if a 81313 U. S. at 525. The significance of a nonnavigable tributary's con- tribution to the impact of floods upon commerce is apparent from the fol- lowing statement by the Court: "The contribution which the Red River makes to disastrous floods in its basin and in the lower Mississippi has long been recognized. Huge crop damage, the loss of buildings, bridges and live- stock, pollution of fertile fields, the erosion of rich farm lands, bank cavings, interruption of navigation, injury of port facilities, the creation of sand bars in the channels, interruption or stoppage of interstate transportation by rail, truck and motorcar, disease, pestilence and death, relief of the homeless and destitute-all these are now familiar costs of the floods on the Mississippi. And the history of the Red River valley shows that it has long been plagued by such disasters and burdened by their costs. "Floods pay no respect to state lines. Their effective control in the Mis- sissippi valley has become increasingly a subject of national concern, in recognition of the fact that single states are impotent to cope with them effectively" (footnotes omitted). 313 U. S. at 520-522. w Act of March 3, 1879, 20 Stat. 377, 387. The first specific authorization for construction of a power project in a navigable stream appeared in the Act of July 5,1884, 23 Stat. 154. See First Annual Report of the Federal Poweb Commission, p. 48 (1921). |