542 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The chief reasons why the large storage capacity of the various 

 reservoirs has not been sufficient to provide a proper dry -weather 

 flow are stated as : 



1) The inaccessibility of several of these reservoirs. 



2) The constant surreptitious use of the water by lumbermen 

 for the purpose of floating logs down the streams, from which it 

 results that the storage is drawn off in the spring, thus leaving 

 the reservoirs empty when actually needed later in the season. 



The question may be very properly asked : Why, if the State 

 had inaugurated by chapter 181 of the laws of 1851 a reservoir 

 system on Black river, with a view of compensation for the 

 diverted water in kind, there should have been any payment of 

 damages at all? The answer to this question is as follows: 

 While the reservoirs were actually authorized in 1851, still in 

 1858-59, when these claims were under consideration, only one 

 reservoir — that on the North branch — had been completed, work 

 having been stopped on the South branch, Woodhull and Chub 

 lake reservoirs in 1857 for lack of funds. The mill owners had 

 therefore waited ten years without having received either money 

 compensation for the damage or compensation in kind. Com- 

 menting on this situation the Canal Appraisers in their discussion 

 of difficulties in the way of estimating damages state in effect 

 that owing to the uncertainties of legislative action no one can 

 say when the reservoir system will actually be completed, but if 

 the reservoirs were completed, and they had accomplished wholly 

 or in any ascertained part the desired object of producing a larger 

 summer flow in Black river, such fact would have an important 

 bearing in reducing the amount of permanent injury to the water 

 power. In view of the foregoing, the appraisers say : 



These claims can not receive as satisfactory decision as we 

 should desire until the successful or unsuccessful working of the 

 reservoirs, if completed, can be known, or the policy determined 

 whether or not they are to be completed ; and the appraisers have 

 almost as little faith in the correctness of the conclusions which 

 they may reach as in the belief that those conclusions will satisfy 

 either the claimants or the State. For the nearly four years that 

 the present Board of Appraisers have held office, they have kept 

 these claims in abeyance in the hope that the time would come 

 when they could dispose of the claims in a manner which would. 



