184 A.D. 514 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1918
The action is to restrain the pollution of Moodna creek in the county of Orange, on which the defendant owns and operates a carpet mill, while 8,000 feet below it is plaintiff’s paper mill. Defendant has water closets available to its 640 employees, whereof the effluent is carried through a tailrace into the stream. The washings of the wool used in its products enter the stream, as well as the water in which the dyed yarn has been washed. It appears that the stream with some tributaries receives impurities from the soils, farming and more settled regions through which it runs, as well as from a paper mill some five miles above defendant’s mill. Professor Prescott, defendant’s expert witness, found the stream highly polluted, as indicated by the following count of colon bacilli: Water from above defendant’s mill, per cubic centimeter, 46,000; from the place of defendant’s intake, 75,250; from defendant’s raceway affected by sewage, 139,500, and he denounced the water as unfit for drinking purposes. Although he said that a proper sand filter would remove some 99.5 per cent of the bacilli, and mere contact with the water would not be injurious, the burden of filtering it and of avoiding its destructive effects by abstention would thereby fall upon the plaintiff and its employees. There
The findings and judgment should be amended in accordance with this opinion, and as so amended affirmed, without costs.
Jenks, P. J., Mills, Putnam and Blackmar, JJ., concurred.
Findings and judgment amended in accordance with opinion and as so amended affirmed, without costs. Order to be settled before Mr. Justice Thomas.