OCR Text |
Show Chapter 7 Other Public Purposes In previous Chapters, we examined the evolution of legisla- tion focused on navigation, flood control, irrigation, and power and multiple-purpose projects. In each of these Chapters and particularly in the last, however, that examination compre- hended aspects of laws incidentally serving public purposes in addition to the major objectives. Thus, from time to time we noted laws concerning drainage, water supply, fish and wildlife preservation, recreation, refuse matter, and data to be assembled in the course of examinations and surveys. Our en- deavor here will be to collect and examine the significant stat- utes treating each of these incidental matters separately. In addition, we shall consider legislative attention to shore pro- tection, sediment and salinity control, pollution abatement and control, and federal programs independently established for the collection of parts of the basic data prerequisite to ef- ficient development of water resources. While some of these activities are ends in themselves, all of them serve public pur- poses in the course of development, utilization, and conser- vation of water resources, including related land uses. Drainage Drainage is a form of land reclamation and thus might be considered in" conjunction with other chapters devoted to irrigation, flood control, or uses of land related to water resources. Despite such interrelationships, however, this activity has sufficient identity to warrant its separate con- sideration here. Drainage and reclamation of submerged lands have gen- erally been left to private and local interests.1 With the Swamp 1 See Drainage of AoBiotrLTtntAi. Lands, Sixteenth Census of the United States (1940). 315 |