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- for Ship Owners Chicago to Divert Less Water Injunction Is Made Perma- nent and Sanitary District Instructed to Limit Quantity of Water Taken from Lake to 4167 Cubic Feet Per Second —Chicago Trying to Avoid Obedience to Court Order— —Srill Taking as Much Water as Ever—What Greater Depth Means to Lake Vessel Oper- ators—For Every Inch, 100 Tons of Ore Per Trip. Harvey D. Goulder, whose masterly argument for the Lake Carriers Association upheld the case for navigators The smaller boats obtain the coal carrying business. For every inch added to the draft of water in the lower lakes the trip capacity of a 10,000-ton ore boat is increased approximately 100 tons. Conservatively stated, if the vessel could have 6 inches more water, representing the total withdrawn at Chicago, it could load 500 more tons of ore. This would mean an in- crease of about 5 per cent in the trip capacity of the ore fleet, or 155,000 tons over and above the present 3,116,300 tons capacity. The number of, trips made with ore average about 20 in a season. Additional capacity for such a period would be 3,100,000 tons. The average rate per ton of ore paid to the ore carriers in 1924 was 68 cents, calculated from actual shipments from the various ports. On this basis the increase in carrying ca- pacity would mean an additional revenue of $2,108,000. This assumes a normal shipment, whereas in 1924 the movement was only two-thirds of that. Total increase in revenue depends on tonnage handled. A _ simpler way for grasping the significance of increased draft for lake vessels is by recalling that every inch adds about 1 per cent to operating revenue. Vessels interests estimate a combined revenue increase for iron ore, coal, stone, grain and other commodities of $3,000,000 to $4,000,000 in a normal year. This as- sumes that practically all of the withdrawal of water at Chicago cease. If the amount is to be reduced from 10,000 cubic feet per second to 4167 cubic feet the gain in revenue would be only a little over half 35 of the foregoing carefully estimated returns. The case for the vessel owners was very completely set forth in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court by the Lake Carriers’ association. This brief, in part, is as follows: On the evidence it cannot be controverted that this [diversion of water by the sanitary district of Chicago] results in lowering the lake levels, and the abstraction of the excess over 250,000 feet per minute impairs seriously the navigability of the Great Lakes water route—the greatest and cheapest in the world. The conceded total reduction of the lake levels is 514 inches and even greater in the St. Lawrence river. The court finds that this inflicts a direct loss to those dependent on the water navigation rout. In the report of the In- ternational Waterways commission, 1907, the direct yearly loss to vessels alone in freight earnings is con- servatively placed at a million and a half. But there is also the vast loss and damage to some 106 improved harbors in the states fronting the Great Lakes and over 50 on the Canadian side—and to the © country at large and its industrial business dependent on the Great Lakes route for the annual movement of more than 100,000,000 tons of raw materials and other commodities wherein the saving in freight rates, com- pared with the cost of rail transportation, easily reaches or exceeds a quarter of a billion dollars every year. The object and being and purpose of the defendant sanitary district are avowedly for local sewage treat- ment only, to which has been added manufacture of