27 Colo. 169 | Colo. | 1900
Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the court.
On behalf of the defendant in error, his counsel urges that the section of the ordinance under consideration is illegal, for the reason that the municipal authorities had no power to declare a pigsty or slaughterhouse a nuisance per se, except they be maintained within the limits of the city or within one mile beyond. In support of this proposition, we are referred to subdivisions 51 and 58 of section 4403, supra, which in terms provide that the city council has authority to direct the locatiort, and regulate the management of slaughterhouses and other designated places, and also to prohibit any offensive or unwholesome business within the limits of the municipality, or within one mile of its boundaries. This is not the material or decisive question under the undisputed facts, and it is unnecessary to determine it in this case. The legislature has clothed the municipal authorities with power to protect the stream from which the inhabitants of the city derive their supply of water from pollution, within prescribed limits. In pursuance of this power, an ordinance has been passed for that .purpose. It must be reasonably construed, and given that interpretation, if possible, which will effect the object of its passage (1 Dillon’s Municipal Corporations [4th ed.], 420), and in construing it, we must consider its provisions as a whole. The manifest purpose of the ordinance, as indicated by its title,, is to protect the stream from pollution, from which the water supplied to the city for the use of the inhabitants is drawn. In sections other than the one under which defendant in error was prosecuted, it provides for the punishment of persons who shall permit any fluid which would render the waters of the stream impure, to flow into it from premises occupied by them, or who shall permit any substance to remain upon their premises within such distance of the stream that such substance, or the drainage therefrom, might fall, or be carried into the river. The section in question inhibits the construction or keeping of any pigsty or any place upon the bank of the river, the
It is also claimed by defendant in error, that because the town of Animas city takes its supply of water from the Animas river at a point which would give the latter jurisdiction
Any other conclusion would result in the anomaly, that if two municipalities were so situated with respect to each other, secured their water supply from the same source, and at such relative points that the jurisdiction of each for the purpose of preventing pollutions was coextensive, the common supply could be polluted with impunity within such territory. The judgment of the county court is reversed, and the cause remanded for further proceedings, in accordance with the views herein expressed.
Reversed and remanded.
Rehearing
ON PETITION EOR REHEARING.
In petition for rehearing filed by defendant in error, our attention is called to the fact that no exception was properly taken or preserved to the judgment in this case, and for that reason we are precluded, under repeated decisions, from reviewing the evidence for the purpose of determining its sufficiency to support the judgment of the trial court, and as the judgment below was reversed for the reason that the facts established by the testimony clearly showed that it was erroneous, a rehearing should be granted.
We think that the other questions raised by the petition for rehearing have been disposed of correctly in the main opinion in the case.
Petition for rehearing denied.