A Jury Settles the Water for Calispell
Landowners in the Calispell bottoms are awarded damages, clearing the way for a diking district to reclaim about 100 acres from the annual overflow.
In Superior Court at Colville last week the suits of Calispell Diking District No. 1, for the condemnation of lands belonging to F. H. McLeish, F. Winchester and Henry Bauer, were heard before Judge Carey. The jury awarded damages as follows: McLeish, $11 for a fraction of an acre of ground, no damages; Henry Bauer, no damages; F. Winchester, $400 damages and $20 per acre for 18 acres of land.
Residents of the diking district are well pleased over this disposition of the cases and believe that they will be able to get work started at once and this year's crops protected from the annual overflow. In the neighborhood of 100 acres will be reclaimed at an estimated cost of $10 per acre. Several large railroad contractors who worked on the I. W. N. last year are figuring on the job and will take warrants in payment, avoiding the red tape and delay incident to the issuance of bonds.
“Residents of the diking district are well pleased over this disposition of the cases and believe that they will be able to get work started at once and this year's crops protected from the annual overflow.”
Diking districts were a Progressive-era answer to a familiar Northwest problem: low ground that floods every spring. The legal machinery—condemnation, damage awards, and warrants instead of bonds—is still how public drainage and flood-control projects get built, and who pays for them remains the fight.
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