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Show -98- provide for the welfare or necessities of their inhabitants." -'¦93a * • ¦ ¦ ' ¦ • .- The situation of the Sanitary District having become desperate, and navi- gation in the Port of Chicago being menaced if the sewage of the city should accumulate in the Chicago River, the Secretary of War issued a temporary permit for the diversion of water required, by theSanitary District until new. means of sewage disposal should be devised* ¦ . This brought about a coalition of all. the lake States other than Illinois, to test the power of Congress, or the Secretary of War acting under congress- ional authority/ to authorize the diversion in question* Nearly all of these States had been permitted to file briefs as friends of the Court in the prior suit by the United States, but perceiving that the long-drawn-out litigation in that controversy had produced no practical results9 the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Minnesota, under the leadership and initiative of Wisconsin, filed suit in the United States Supreme Court to restrain any diversion of -water in quantity sufficient to affect natural con- ditions on the Great Lakes* The grounds for complaint were that the acts of Illinois and the Sanitary District had lowered, and unless restrained would continue to lcwer more seriously, the level of water in all the Great Lakes and connecting rivers and oliannels, to the great detriment of navigation in the numerous harbors of the complaining States which had been improved only to natural water level and were no longer approachable by vessels laden to normal capacity; that the permit of the Secretary of l-'.ar even for temporary diversion to dispose of sewage from the Sanitary District of Chicago was illegal and beyond the constitutional power of Congress to authorize; that in so far as it was intended to improve the navigation of the Mississippi River at the expense of navigable capacity of the Great Lakes, it amounted to a pre- ference of the ports of the Mississippi River States over those of the com- plaining States in direct violation of the federal constitution. Against this contention the States of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas promptly became aligned with the State of Illinois, although Missouri had recently complained in the same Court against the same acts of Illinois and the Sanitary District as unlawfully polluting the Mississippi River and the water supply of the City of St. Louis.193d These States denied injury to navigation on the Great Lakes, and justified the diversion of water from Lake Michigan as a federal enterprise for the im- provement of navigation through the Chicago River and canal to the jurisdiction there is like that over land within the same State. Its control over the river is simply by virtue of the fact that it is one of the highways of inter*state and international commerce." This seems to apply to the Great Lakes, a_s the boundaries of the riparian States are co-terminous with the international boundary through the lakes .and all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, . . ^a-sanitary District of ^hicago v. United States, 266 U-S.i4.O5, 1^26, k5 Sup. Ct* 176, 178, 69 L* Ed. 352, 363 (1925). ¦^^Missouri v, Illinois, 180 U.S. 208, 21 Sup.* Ct. 331, L& L.. Ed. 1+97 (I9OI), 200 U.S. i;96, 26 Sup. Ct. 268, 50 L, Ed. 572 (I906), 202 U.S. 598, 26 |