Irwin

The complaint sets forth that certain counties of the state, to wit, Yuba, Sutter, Sacramento, Colusa, Glenn, Tehama, Yolo, and Solano, “banded together for self-protection against” certain alleged “danger and damage” arising from the deposit through hydraulic mining operations of “masses of debris, gravel, sand,'and other heavy material into the Feather, Yuba, and Bear rivers, filling up the channels of said rivers, thereby causing the same to overflow their hanks,” thus causing “many thousands of acres of valuable land therein to he entirely destroyed and rendered valueless”; and that said counties formed. *687 an organization prior to the year 1892, which has ever since existed, and still exists, under the name of the “State Anti-Debris Association” for protection against such damage; that said association has, by its efforts, and by legal measures taken to that end, saved to each of said counties large amounts of property from ruin; that during the years 1894, 1895, and 1896 defendant county “contributed as its pro rata of the necessary cost and expense for such protection to the said association the sum of two hundred dollars per month for each and every and all of the said…