Conservation Commission. 107 



of the oxygen naturally contained in these waters is now so great 

 that fish cannot live therein, and all of our valuable species which 

 annually ascend the river to reach their spawning grounds cannot 

 pass this city except at high tide, when the inflow of cleaner and 

 clearer waters, not yet exhausted of their proper percentage of 

 oxygen, enables them to pass this point of extreme pollution. 



The commercial pollution is fully as serious; large factories,' 

 without so much as " by your leave," dump their so-called waste 

 and refuse materials, composed largely of diluted soaps and fats, 

 acids, alkalis and spent coloring matter into our streams, and so 

 great has become this nuisance, still better called " outrage," 

 that in many sections shellfish have been entirely exterminated, 

 and fisheries which were of great value in years past are now 

 absolutely barren. 



When it is considered that in our sewage thousands upon thou- 

 sands of tons of valuable fertilizing material, to replace which 

 millions of dollars' worth of fertilizers are annually imported 

 from foreign countries, is not only wasted by being promiscuously 

 dumped into our waters, but is at the same time destroying a 

 large and important source of food production and endangering 



the health and lives of our citizens, and when our large manu- 

 facturing concerns, in utter disregard of the rights of our citizens 

 and the 'State, further pollute our waters with waste, many of 

 which, if subjected to modern chemical methods, would produce 

 valuable by-products, and which, no difference whether valuable 

 or not, these commercial plants have no more right in law or 

 equity to deposit upon the valuable properties of the State than 

 upon the farms or grounds of their neighbors, it is astonishing 

 that this question, of such enormous and vital importance, 

 economic and hygienic, has never heretofore received proper 

 attention, and that, in the legislation enacted this year, under 

 paragraph 171 of chapter 647, it receives no more attention than 

 the simple rehashing, verbatim, of section 207 of chapter 130 

 of the Laws of 1908. 



In the year 1908 conditions were already deplorable, and large 

 sections of valuable property had been destroyed, but this was 

 just as little considered then as it is now. 



The increase of this menace can be especially observed at the 

 present time in sections of Long Island sound and Raritan and 



