In an article in the Sunday Tribune, Shell Rock River Watershed District attorney Matt Benda suggests that I might be confused about which dam I mentioned in my letter to the editor (Sept. 23). No, Mr Benda, I’m not confused.

He claims he couldn’t find any case like I described in the legal records. Well, they also couldn’t find the vacate order for the original easement and dam, which was returned to my dad by the county commissioners back in October 1958.

I’m not in charge of putting vacate orders or court decisions into the public record, but if Benda would go to the archives of the Albert Lea Tribune and read the April 23, 1961, article from which I quoted, he’ll discover the case. Perhaps he will then have the due diligence to get to the bottom of this case. If he doesn’t have time for this, I’ll mail him copies of the pertinent articles and some interesting articles about how the state of Minnesota, in their claim to own all state waters, was defeated. Some of these state defeats were for actual lake bottoms with the underlying question being navigability.

These bring us back to Judge Martin Nelson’s statement when he rendered judgment in favor of my dad: “The stream (Shell Rock River) has always been treated by abutting private owners and by the public generally as a private water, a non-navigable water.”

Lloyd Palmer

Albert Lea