104 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



There are also numerous decisions to the effect that 

 a city has no more right to maintain a public nuisance 

 than has a private individual. The discharge of sewage 

 into a stream, thereby causing pollution, is a nuisance. 

 If it be a private nuisance, affecting few people, the city 

 or individual causing the damage may be held liable in 

 civil damages, or sometimes it may be enjoined. Wlien, 

 however, the pollution is of water used for a public water 

 supply the act is a public nuisance and it may be enjoined. 

 Not only so, but the city or individual causing the dam- 

 age may be held in civil damages for all harm done. The 

 upper city may be compelled to pay the expense of the 

 lower city in maintaining its filter plant, and it may be 

 held in addition for sickness and deaths resulting from 

 the impurity of the water. 



It has sometimes been claimed that use for over twenty 

 years gave a prescriptive right. That might be so held 

 as regards a private nuisance, but the courts have re- 

 peatedly held that no amount of usage could give a pre- 

 scriptive right to maintain a public nuisance. Where the 

 action has been against private individuals it has some- 

 times been held that those who had been so discharging 

 private sewage for twenty years might have a prescrip- 

 tive right, as against other individuals ; but the fact that 

 A had so used it for twenty years gave no prescriptive 

 right to B who had only discharged his sewer into the 

 stream for ten years. 



In the case of Attorney General vs. Grand Rapids ( 175 

 Mich. 503) the plea of prescriptive right Avas made. The 

 court again affirmed the dictum that no amount of usage 

 could give a prescriptive right to commit a public nui- 

 sance ; and it added that the fact that Grand Rapids so 

 discharged its seAvage when it was a small city give the 

 large city no prescriptive right. Prescriptive right is 

 limited to the kind and amount of usage which Avas main- 

 tained for over twenty years. 



In Attorney General v. Birmingham, etc. Drainage 

 District, (1910, L. R. I. Ch. 48) an injunction was 

 granted against the discharge of the drainage district 

 into a stream, but on appeal Sir William Ramsey Avas ap- 



