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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The special commissioners employed as their engineer J. J. R. 

 Croes to take charge of the investigation to be made by the 

 board. Under Mr Croes's direction investigations were made as 

 to possible municipal water supplies for Syracuse from eleven 

 sources: Salmon river, Skaneateles lake, Lake Ontario, Seneca 

 river, Onondaga creek, Gang wells, Cazenovia lake, Oneida lake, 

 Otisco lake, Tully lakes and the supply of the Syracuse Water 

 Compaq*. After an exhaustive study of these possible sources of 

 supply, Mr Croes submitted a report under date of January 26, 

 1889, in which he recommended that Skaneateles lake be adopted 

 as the source of the municipal water supply, on the ground chiefly 

 that the water of this lake was superior to any of the others from 

 a sanitary point of view; that it could be supplied by gravity, 

 and that the cost would be less than a proper supply from any 

 other of the available sources. 



In the report of the special commissioners it is pointed out 

 that section 6 of article 7 of the Constitution of New York would 

 render it impossible for the city of Syracuse to obtain Skaneateles 

 lake as a source of water supply, because that lake constitutes 

 part of Erie canal, and is therefore the property of the State and 

 can not be disposed of by it. The constitution, however, does not 

 define what the Erie canal consists of, but by article 1, title 9, 

 chapter 9, part 1 of the revised statutes, the legislature has enacted 

 that the navigable connections joining the waters of Lake Erie 

 with those of Hudson river, and all the side cuts, feeders and other 

 works belonging to the State, connected therewith, shall be known 

 by the name of the Erie canal. 



The special commissioners held that the constitution did not 

 make Skaneateles lake a part of the Erie canal, but that what 

 the constitution means is that Erie canal — the channel across the 

 State and the waters necessary for its use — shall not be sold, and 

 not that any feeders originally designated by the State as forming 

 a part of it may not be disposed of and others Substituted in 

 their places. Further, inasmuch as the constitution has not 

 defined what shall be considered as the Erie canal, but that such 

 definition has been made by the legislature, it therefore follows 

 that if the legislature were competent to enact that all feeders of 

 the Erie canal should become and be a part thereof, it was equally 



