but any law which,
as in this case, has so positive a reason for its existence, and
violation of which is so certain to bring disaster on persons drinking
the water of the stream below the point where the sewage is discharged,
any law which appeals for its enforcement so directly to the common
sense and right feeling of all intelligent people, seems hardly to need
legal machinery for its enforcement. It must depend, as indeed all laws
must depend, upon the intelligent support of the community, and surely
no law would commend itself more urgently than this one forbidding the
pollution of drinking water.

In spite of the fact that the lack of air in the water will prevent
bacterial action, there are, nevertheless, many cases where the
discharge of sewage into a stream may be permitted as being the best
solution of the disposal problem, provided always that the stream is not
used and is not likely to be used for drinking water. Such cases occur
where the stream is relatively large and where the level of the stream
is fairly regular, so that there is no likelihood of the deposit of
organic matter on the banks during the falling of the stream level.
Examples of this sort might be cited in the vicinity of the Mohawk or
Hudson River, or in the vicinity of any of the larger rivers of any
populous state, since although the water of the Mohawk is used by the
city of Albany for drinking purposes, yet the amount of organic matter
which inevitably finds its way into such rivers precludes its use for
drinking without filtration. Into the Hudson below Albany there can
hardly be any question of the propriety of discharging sewage from a
single house.

Again, houses in the vicinity of large bodies of still water may without
question be allowed to discharge into those lakes. For example, houses
in the vicinity of Lake Ontario or Lake Michigan, or even of much
smaller lakes, should not contribute any offensive pollution to the
waters of the lake. In New York State, some of the smaller lakes are
used as water-supplies for cities, as, for example, Owasco Lake for the
city of Auburn and Skaneateles Lake for the city of Syracuse, and,
acting under the statutes, special laws have been passed by the State
Department of Health, forbidding any discharge of any kind of household
wastes into these lakes. The same is done in other states. Here, again,
it is a question of the drinking supply which is being considered, and
not a question of the pos