Illinois River Valley drainage and levee districts summary and recommendations-Continued

20. Coal Creek.

23. Kelly Lake.

24. Big Lake..

25. Seahorn.

30. Southard.

34. Liverpool..

2 War Department estimate.

3 Cost per acre includes proportionate cost of Coon Run drainage and levee district.

4 War Department estimate; War Department has received application for aid but State has not received an application from district.

Paid privately.

6 Mutual district.

7 To be used for cleaning ditches.

Does not include expenditures before 1924.

1 Districts' estimate.

Mr. DIRKSEN. I have conferred with the chairman of the Illinois Planning Commission, and I want to say that that commission, while I will not commit them to a statement, are quite in sympathy with my general proposal. The opinion from such a high State authority ought to have considerable weight so far as the matter of setting these levees back is concerned.

Mr. DOCKWEILER. You have no public domain in the State?

Mr. DIRKSEN. In the main, only so far as it has been acquired in conjunction with the Federal Government. For instance, in the extreme southern end of the State they now have two forest units, the Shawnee unit and the Illini unit, the aggregate of which will probably be 3 or 4 hundred thousand acres.

The only domain we have is such domain as is acquired now or has been acquired in the last few years.

Mr. DOCKWEILER. None of the domain is along the river?

Mr. DIRKSEN. No; except a few very limited areas.

Mr. DOCKWEILER. So the property along the river was really privately owned property?

Mr. DIRKSEN. That is right.

Mr. DOCKWEILER. If the Army engineers would cease trying to build up these levees and set back these levees, then, of course, during some years there will be floods again and this land will be flooded, if the work there does not proceed.

Mr. DIRKSEN. Yes; and then expense to the public will recur.

Mr. DOCKWEILER. If there is another flood and the river floods private land, since the Government has, during the years, put up these levees, would not the Government be responsible for neglect, in a tort action, for not keeping up the levees?

Mr. DIRKSEN. No; there is no responsibility on the part of the Government, either morally or otherwise, in my judgment, so far as keeping up the levees is concerned. These are privately built.

In the second place, if there were any responsibility, we could have fastened the responsibility upon the agents of the Federal Government, in the War Department, when they permitted the diversion of water from Lake Michigan in 1922, which flooded over 17 of the levee districts and occasioned damaged estimated at $12,000,000. They have always resisted any claim for damage.

Mr. DOCKWEILER. Of course, these people would not have the right to sue the Government, but they would have the right to come in with private bills, asking for compensation for the damage because of neglect to keep up the levees.

Mr. DIRKSEN. No. These levees have all been privately built by the drainage districts.

What they propose to do under the Flood Control Act of 1936 is to pick up the levees and set them back.

They say they want so many millions to begin with, and I have con. tended that before we get through setting them back we will have as much as $15,000,000 invested in the setting-back process. If we added a few million dollars to that we could buy every acre of land at the market price and put an end to this expense once and for all, and serve the interests of conservation and restoration.

They saddle a lot of maintenance and emergency expense upon the people of the State. If we have floods down there we appropriate