FLAX MILL REFUSE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 52, 19 July 1912, Page 5

FLAX MILL REFUSE.

RIVERS NOT TO BE POLLUTED, I v**

By Telegraph—Press Association. Palmerston N., Thursday. A case of very great importance to flaxmillers was held at the last sitting of the Supreme Court in Palmerston, in which Pearee, a settler on the hanks of the Oroua river, sought to show that four fiaxmillers, whose mills are on the banks of the Oroua, east or allowed refuse from their mills to flow or get into the river, with the result that the water was polluted and unfit for consumption by stock. Further, that the bed of the river was raised, causing the river in flood time to overflow and flood plaintiff's land. Reserved judgment was delivered today, in which Sir Robert Stout decided in favor of plaintiff. He said: "Defendants cannot put the effluents from their mills into the river, and so pollute it. It may be that a considerable industry may be crippled or destroyed if millers cannot continue what they have done, and it may be that plaintiff's loss or damage will be small, very small, compared with the loss defendants will suffer by the alteration of present methods of the disposal of effluents, but I cannot consider such results."

The Court held, however, that the defendants were not liable for the damage sustained from the overflow of the river. Judgment was for £5 damages in each action with costs on the lowest scale, and an injunction to issue to prevent the effluents going into the river in their present state.