action of the local board of health declaring the pollution of the spring water to be a nuisance or determental to health with an order from the local board to the owner to abate the nuisance or the detrimental conditions. (e) If the owner disregards the order to abate or to discontinue, then the local board or its agents may enter on the premises and abate the nuisance or improve the conditions and collect the expense of the same from the owner by action and lien. (f) If the local board of health (the town board), declines to take the action outlined above, the matter may be brought before the State Board of Health, which body would, if the case were found to be a proper one, direct the local board to convene and take the action necessary. (g) The State Board of Health may be applied to for the enactment of rules for the protection of the water supply of the village, which rules would naturally include a prohibition of such pollution as now exists. Violation of the rule would, after proper notice, be actionable before the courts and punishable by penalty. (h) An action may be brought under the common law of nuisances for injunction against the continuation of the pollution. As each of these methods concerns the legal rights of the land owner and the vil lage corporation, your village attorney or legal advisor should be called on for advice as to the several methods and as to the detailed procedure in which every method is followed.

Passing to the second division of the problem, viz.: The remedial and constructive operations to be carried out in improv ing the spring water supply so as to be satisfactory in character and adequate in quantity, the following list of improvements should be executed:

1 The spring well receiving the water from the springs on the water works property and the well receiving the water from the two springs on the adjoining land, should each be cleaned out, a concrete bottom placed in each, and the walls of each be made water-tight with cement mortar, or relaid in cement mortar. For the purpose of emptying the wells to clean or repair them, each should have a drain pipe leading from it with a valve just outside the wall. The bottom should be several feet below the

outlet pipe to the reservoir, which should have a strainer with small holes but of ample aggregate area of openings. The present iron pipes will apparently answer for this purpose after being cleaned out. 2 For each of the two springs on the water works property and the two on the adjoining land, the spring should be traced back to where it issues from either rock or hard-pan or firm clay; the opening should be enclosed with a small brick curb. with a concrete bottom and the top arched over and covered with soil. From this curb a small vitrified tile pipe with cemented joints should be laid to the spring well into which it discharges; this pipe and the curb should be laid below frost line, or but little above it.

3 A ten-inch cast-iron pipe should be laid from the old reservoir down to the creek bed just below the dam for the purpose of draining this reservoir; this pipe should be laid in a trench cut in the old earth around the end of the dam and not through the dam, and should have a heavy grade and a gate valve on the pipe as near the reservoir as possible. 4 The earth filling around the inner stone reservoir should be removed and a stiff clay puddle-bank be laid around the outside of the wall, well tamped and puddled and carried up flush with the top of the wall; it should have a slope not less than one and one-half to one, and a thickness on top of at least two feet. This should be put in with the water out of the old reservoir and as low in the inner reservoir as will enter the discharge pipe to the village. Before the puddle-bank is laid and after the old material is removed, the walls of the reservoir should be thoroughly cleaned on the outside and all visible cracks cleaned out and cemented up. After the puddle-bank has been laid, the same operation should be carried out on the inside of the reservoir; i. e. the cracks cemented up. 5 The bottom of the inner reservoir should be cleaned of all vegetable matter and of all earth and gravel and clay down to hard material, except for a space of five feet from the walls all around, which should not be carried down as far as the remainder. During this time the supply from the spring well above the reservoir should be shut off and temporarily led into the lower spring

well. Beginning at the walls and working inward a concrete floor 12 inches thick should be laid over the entire Bottom of the reservoir. Springs of water from the outer reservoir will probably be developed when the bottom is cleared, but these can be managed if properly handled. This work and the work of the puddle-bank should be entrusted only to persons having had experience in hydraulic masonry. Around the walls inside, the concrete should be laid thicker than over the general bottom. It may be advantageously made two feet thick for a strip five feet wide all around the three walls. The concrete should be carried up the slope of the dam. 6 To provide an additional supply of water in case of fire, the present wooden tube through the north wall of the reservoir should be replaced by an iron pipe twelve inches in diameter set in cement with a valve and stem; the top of this inlet pipe should be about three feet below the crest of the dam. The above steps have been outlined on the assumptions that the right to make the improvements on the springs of the adjoining land will be acquired, and that the supply from these four springs will be adequate; in the event of failure to realize either of these assumptions, it is confidently believed from personal examination that an ample additional supply can be readily secured from springs equally good in character.

My recommendations to your board are then as follows:

1 That your legal advisor prepare a proposition to submit to the owner of the springs by which your village shall acquire a permanent right to the water of the springs, with or without providing the owner with a supply for his cattle, including the right to enter on the land and make such construction as may be necessary to secure and maintain the purity of the spring water as indicated above. And that before submitting the above a definite order of procedure along one or more of the several lines of remedy be prepared as an alternate step.

2 With the above, that your board proceed to acquire the right to the water of the springs, preferably by amicable arrangement, but if not by forcible procedure.

3 That in order to judge as to the adequacy of the spring

supply, each of the four springs, and such others as may be in question, be carefully measured.

4 That the several items of improvement indicated above as being needed, be executed.

Dear Sirs-This village had a map for a system of sewers approved by you October 27, 1892.

I believe that some of the inhabitants intend to construct quite an extensive and important part of said system in complete violation of such approved map as to depth, size of pipe and without a definite contract as to cost and without employing an engineer. I do not wish my name to appear as making a complaint, but would like instructions as to what ought to be done and what your Board can do to prevent this attempt to defeat the purposes of the law. The excuse is to avoid expense. The village trustees seem to be indifferent to the matter; perfectly so.

Please consider this a private letter which I thought it my duty to write you, as I made the surveys for the map which you approved and own valuable property on the street to be affected. I thought perhaps the Board might wish an opportunity to act in the matter.

Yours truly,

HENRY L. GRIFFIS

HENRY L. GRIFFIS, New Paltz, N. Y.:

ALBANY, June 3, 1898

Dear Sir-We are in receipt of your communication of the 1st inst. stating that you believe some of the inhabitants of the vil lage of New Paltz intend to construct quite an important part of the sewer system of that village in violation of plans approved by this Board October 27, 1892.

In reply you are informed that the law provides that no changes shall be made in the sewer system approved by this Board, until plans showing such changes have received the approval of the Board.

If you will furnish this department with positive information as to proposed changes in the sewer system of your village, from the plans as approved in October, 1892, we will be pleased to cause an investigation to be made.

Very respectfully,

T. A. STUART,

Assistant secretary

NEW PALTZ, June 4, 1898

T. A. STUART:

Dear Sir. Your favor of yesterday is at hand. I inclose a clipping from the New Paltz Times of May 31, 1898.

About 150 feet of ditch, about five feet deep, have been opened up, extending from the 24-inch drainage tile with which they propose to connect their eight-inch tile on North Front street and extending to the railroad.

The tile not being ready the ditch has stood open two days and is now about half caved in, as no shoring was used. They have no stakes for line or grade and the work is being done entirely by common laborers.

Yours truly,

HENRY L. GRIFFIS

P. S.-The sewer is to extend from a point in Chestnut street about 100 feet north of Main street, through Chestnut street to North Front street; thence northwesterly along said North Front