185 Iowa 282 | Iowa | 1919
This appeal involves no disputed questions of jurisdiction, or of the regularity of the proceedings in which the drainage district was established. As stated by counsel for appellants in argument, the two contested propositions are:
(1) Was the plan recommended by the engineer a practicable or feasible one?
(2) Was the burden to be imposed by the proposed improvement greater than should be borne -by the land to be benefited?
Appellants’ position is that the plan was neither feasible nor practicable, and that the cost or burden of the improvement was out of reasonable proportion to the benefits to the district.
Both of these inquiries pertain to matters of fact, and upon both, the board of supervisors, having original jurisdiction, and the district court, exercising appellate jurisdiction, have found with the petitioners for the improvement. Under the statute, these proceedings are to be treated as partaking of an equitable nature, and this court is not bound by the findings of fact in the court below, if, upon
The cases, as a whole, leave the boundary line between legislative and judicial functions in the matter of establishing drainage districts enveloped in some degree of fog and uncertainty, but the right of this court upon appeal to review the record upon the questions raised in the
So far as concerns the objection to the cost of the improvement, the evidence tends to show that the aggregate of expense reasonably to be anticipated is somewhere from $10 to $14 per acre, upon the lands included within the district, an amount clearly not per se great enough to raise any presumption of extravagance; and whether it is a greater burden than the lands ought to bear depends wholly upon the benefits, if any, which the district as a whole will derive from the drainage when completed. Any assessment, however light, is burdensome if the district receives no corresponding or proportionate benefit from the expenditure of its money. Advance estimates of benefits are, of course, matters of opinion or judgment, rather than of accomplished fact, and may prove to be mistaken; but, as applied to drainage, the present condition of the drainage area, its topography, and the proved results of other similar undertakings under approximately the same conditions, ought to lead an intelligent and impartial tribunal, to which the question is submitted, to a reasonably safe conclusion whether the proposed improvement is a desirable one, and whether its benefits will justify the expense. All these matters were laid before the court below, and, we presume, had its consideration. It may be thought that the average board of supervisors is too close to the parties on either side of such a proposition to act with entire freedom of judgment, but such objection to the court which reviews its decision is not often well founded.
It would be unprofitable to burden this opinion with any statement of the evidence-of the numerous witnesses, or with cuts of the numerous maps and charts which have been laid before us. There are a few things, however, of which there is no serious dispute, and which should be made clear. A stream, known as Platte River, makes its way through the entire length of the district, by an extremely crooked and irregular channel. It is not of uniform width or depth, and at times carries a large volume of water. It is subject to frequent overflow, which renders the useful employment of adjacent lands precarious, and is often destructive of farm crops grown thereon. The proposed ditch is intended to interfcept the flow of this stream at the upper boundary of the district, and carry it in a comparatively straight line to a point near the lower boundary, where it will discharge again into the natural channel. Between these two terminals, the ditch will be liy2 miles in length, while the present course of the river between the same points is about three times that length. The fall per mile of the bottom of the old channel is but from one fourth to one third of the rate on the bottom of the ditch. Water entering the district at its upper boundary will be carried to the lower boundary in much shorter time through the ditch than is possible through the present tortuous channel. The average court is not an expert drainage engineer; but since it knows, presumably, that water under normal conditions runs down hill, and that, the sharper the slope of the hill, the sooner the flow will reach the bottom, it is not hard to believe that, with this proposed improvement completed, the drainage district will be relieved
Among other reasons urged upon .our attention as showing the impracticability of the improvement in an engineering sense, it is said that there are places where the bed of the old channel is below the bottom of the proposed ditch, rendering it impossible to drain the river into or through the ditch. The explanation of this seems to be that, in its long and serpentine course through the district, the river as is usual in sluggish streams, is, to a considerable extent, a succession or series of holes or pools, with intervening shallows. In some of these holes, the bottom of the stream is below the bottom of the proposed ditch; and, of course, they will not be fully emptied by the improvement. This may be evidence that the drainage is not perfect, in that it will not take all the water from every pool in the district;
The judgment of the trial court is well supported by the evidence, and it is, therefore, — Affirmed.