The Press., 1883-08-16
THE POLLUTION OF STREAMS.

Possibly the matter will, some time, at tain importance enough to question the present assumption of municipal and oth- CT corporations of the right to use any flowing stream as an open air sewer. Tn Hartford this aspect of the question has assumed serious character. Park r1vsr receives the principal portion of the sew age of the city of New Britain, the sewage of not less than ten manufactures within the limits of Hartford, and then courses the boundaries of the Bushnell Park, on which stands the capitol, receiving Ill It's course around the park the emptyings of several of the prime. pal sewers of the city The result is an open sewer ot the vlest description in the heart of the city. In the light of the common law and of recent decisions on this subject, it is possible that shit by any individual citizen might not lie against the city as corporation for permitting the befoulment of the stream to the annoyance of passengers on the street and visitors to the park.
 A case was recently tried in the supreme court of New York, ill which the plaintiff sued the city of Rochester for damage to him by reason of sewage poured into stream that flowed through his land, the water being used for his cattle. The court gave him a verdict for damages. The judge decided that the plaintiff has right to say that nobody shall increase the nat ural flow, nor can he be compelled to take any more drainage than flows by reason of the natural shape of the land, nor can the people above him turn anything into the stream which would not naturally flow there if left to it's ordinary course. They cannot increase the area drained, the amount of the drainage, or send down in to the stream any waters or things that would not naturally flow there.
 The Sanitary Engineer, in summing up the common law on this subject, makes | these points from authorities
 ''The fact that the water of stream has been polluted in similar way for more than twenty years, does not confer a prescriptivs right to continue it, particu- | larly when the nuisance results from the increase of the pollution. The fact that g town has legislative authority to dispose of it's sewage does not give it the right to discharge that sewage into stream adapt I ed for domestic use. ..... .t. '"The fact that a person owning prop erty on the banks of stream, and there 1 by owning an interest in the water, does not use the water for domestic purposes and has no desire to use it, does not pre- vent him from bringing an action to pro- tect himself against the requirement by others of prescriptive right to pollute the stream, and thereby depriving him of his right to receive the water unimpaired either in quality or quantity. The Eng fish precedents forbidding the contamina- tion of streams by sewage are very numer- ous, and take the ground that the fact that the preservation of the health of large city requires the removal of its sewage, and that this cannot be done except at great expense without discharging it into stream, does not justify such discharge if there are evan but very few persons to be affected by the nuisance thus created. The city must either buy the rights of these few persons or compensate them for l their violation" 7,- s.slezsr3 .syH tr..