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Show Chapter 4 Flood Control Assumption of federal responsibility for the control of floods on a national basis is a relatively recent development. For many years and because of a variety of reasons, flood control was deemed a problem largely local in character. Early legislative evidence of federal interest appeared in the Swamp Land Acts of 1849 and 1850, granting unsold swamp and overflowed lands to Louisiana, Arkansas, and other states containing similar lands.1 These Acts made such lands sub- ject to disposal of the state legislatures and required that the proceeds therefrom shall be applied to the prosecution of drain- age, reclamation, and flood-control projects. In the next two decades, federal investigations, surveys, and reports reflected a continuing interest confined largely to flood problems in the Mississippi Valley.2 In 1874, Congress provided for the ap- pointment of a commission of engineers to investigate and report a permanent plan for reclamation of that portion of the alluvial basin of the Mississippi River subject to inundation.3 The resulting report discussed various methods of flood control including cutoffs, diversion of tributaries, reservoirs, outlets, 1 Act of March 2, 1849, 9 Stat. 352; Act of September 28, 1850, 9 Stat. 519; under these statutes, the patented areas by acres were: Arkansas, 7,688,455; Louisiana, 9,405,929; Mississippi, 3,288,418; Missouri, 3,346,936. H. Rep. No. 1072, 70th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 114-115 (1928). "Congress made appropriations totaling $100,000 for surveys and in- vestigations of the Mississippi Delta to determine "the most practicable plan for securing it from inundation." Act of September 30, 1850, § 1, 9 Stat. 523, 539; Act of August 31, 1852, § 1, 10 Stat. 105, 107; and see Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 20, 32d Cong., 1st sess. (1851) ; Report Upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River, Professional Paper No. 13, Corps of Engineers, U. S. Army (1861) ; Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 8, 40th Cong., 1st sess. (1866). * Act of June 22,1874,18 Stat. 199. 127 ©11611-51------10 |