282 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Department of Health for 1906 shows the correspondence relative to 

 the pollution of a certain creek. On September 26, 1906, the state 

 commissioner wrote to the president of the local board of health that 

 numerous complaints had been made as to this creek, and that the 

 state inspector had observed that seepage from cesspools found its way 

 to the water. This letter was not answered. On November 14, the state 

 commissioner again wrote. On November 26, the president of the local 

 board replied that rules and regulations had been adopted, but as 

 appears in a letter of December 17 from one of the four local justices 

 of the peace nothing was done other than to post a printed copy of the 

 rules. Cesspools and manure heaps continued to work, and on December 

 10 the president of the local board of health died of typhoid fever, 

 while others in the town suffered from the same disease. The justice of 

 the peace adds, " What we plainly need is some authority strong enough 

 and courageous enough to order a thorough clean-up and see that it is 

 done." In the other case the proprietor of a summer hotel situated on 

 a brook above the plaintiffs land, discharged sewage into that stream. 

 The local board of health had ordered such discharge to prevent the de- 

 fendant from maintaining a cesspool, but this plaintiff, although she 

 did not use the water of the stream for domestic purposes, but only for 

 bathing and driving a turbine wheel, and although it appeared that the 

 water was not affected either to sight or smell, was " strong enough and 

 courageous enough " to fight the hotel proprietor in spite of the board 

 of health. She won her fight in the trial court, then in the appellate 

 division of the supreme court and finally in the court of appeals, and the 

 discharge of sewage was forbidden. It might have been exceedingly 

 difficult, perhaps impossible, to show that a public nuisance existed here, 

 but the purpose of preventing stream pollution was accomplished by the 

 riparian owner who defended her private rights. 



The chief offenders in stream pollution are villages and cities, but 

 the law is that such municipal corporations have no greater right than 

 an individual to interfere with the riparian owner. There are numer- 

 ous cases where actions have been maintained against municipalities, 

 and in many of these cases injunctions have been issued. Where, how- 

 ever, the municipality constructs the offensive sewage system with statu- 

 tory authority the private individual may ultimately fail in preventing 

 pollution, for since his action is based not upon a claim that public 

 health is interfered with, but merely that he is deprived of property 

 rights, if the municipality has been granted the power of eminent 

 domain, it can not be permanently enjoined if compensation is made 

 to the private owner. 



Most of the second great class of nuisances are those where the air 

 has been contaminated, as by smoke, smells or gases. The law protects 

 much more rigorously the right of a riparian owner to pure water than 



