The Westport Times. FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1874.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1158, 13 March 1874, Page 2

The Westport Times. FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1874.

A. law cask of more than usual interest to miners is pending in the Supreme Court, Otago district. It involves a question which if decided adversely to gold miners must greatly check if not entirely put an end to alluvial mining wherever streams into which tailings are discharged run through private property. Under the various mining regulations in force in New Zealand the issue of miners rights and the registration of claims has been held as securing to miners the right to use all running streams for mining purposes, and whenever alluvial ground has been worked, miners have hitherto, without let or hindrance, discharged therein the tailings from their claims, without interference from the holders of private property on the banks of such streams. Lately, however, the owners of some freehold station properly on the banks of the Maerewhenua river, in Otago, have brought action against a mining party for pollution of the stream, and they make legal declaration as follows : " 1. That the plaintiffs have always been and still are lawfully possessed of certain land on the Maerewhenua Eivcr ■ — [Here follows description] And the plaintiffs were entitled to have the use of the Maerewhenua River aforesaid, flowing by the said lands of the plaintiffs, for their cattle to drink and for sheep-washing, and for domestic and other useful and beneficial purposes, without the same being polluted and disturbed as hereinafter mentioned. 2. That the defendants, on the first day of July 1873, and en divers other days and times since the said Ist day of July, 1873, wrongfully polluted and disturbed the water of the said river, Inthrowing and causing to flow into the same, above and near to the land of the plaintiffs, large quantities of earth soil, sand, stone, sludge, tailing--, and other foul and impure substances, 50 that the said river became foul, polluted, and unfit for the plaintiffs' cattle to drink, or for sheep-washing, or for domestic purposes, whereby the plaintiffs lost the use of the water of the said river, and their said land was injured and lessened in value, and the plaintiffs were unable to wash their sheep at the proper season, and were compelled to shear their sheep in the grease, to the great loss and damage of the plaintiffs, Wherefore the plaintiffs claim torecover from the defendants the sum of ten thousand pounds damages ; and the plaintiffs also claim a Writ of Injunction to restrain the defendants from the repetition of the injuries heretofore complained of, and the committal of other injuries of a like kind, relating to the same properties and rights respectively." In addition they also give notice of claim to recover special damage;?, nauiclv : —" Five thousand Pounds for the difference in the selling price of the wool of the plaintiffs' sheep, in consequence of same having to be shorn in the grease, because, owing to the fouling of the waters of the Maerewhenua river, the plaintiffs could not use the waters of the said river for washing their sheep, and they have no other water available for that purpose." The St. Bathan's Mining Association—one of the many similar associations formed in Otago—has deemed it expedient to circulate among the mining commuuity generally throughout the colony the foregoing particulars of the declaration made by the plaintiffs in the suit, to show that it is not a matter of entirely local interest, but cno wherein, if the stake is lost to the defendants, is practically involved the abandonment of the Otago j goldfields by the mining population, and the serious jeopardising of alluvial mining industry in many other J localities.