PASSAIC RIVER POLLUTION.

PASSAIC RIVER POLLUTION.

The commissioners appointed by Governor Griggs, of New Jersey, to consider the subject of the pollution of the Passaic river have presented an exhaustive report to the State legislature in which they describe the condition of the lower Passaic. They state that it is beyond the power of the river to assimilate the daily discharge of 70,000 gallons of sewage into its stream below the falls at Paterson; the result being the transformation of the river into a public nuisance on account of the depreciation of property, owing to the stench, the destruction of fisheries, and the rendering of the stream an impossibility for either pleasure parties or manufacturing purposes. The commissioners have therefore, come to the following conclusions:

(1) That the lower Passaic river is so polluted as to constitute a public nuisance, requiiing immediate remedy; (2) that an act of the legislature should be passed authorizing the construction of a trunk sewer and branches to conduct the sewage of the cities and towns along the lower river to a point where danger from such sewage pollution will cease; (3) that this work should be under the control of commissioners appointed by State authority, acting for the counties and cities and towns interested and affected; (4) that the cost should be assessed upon communities and individuals usingand benefited by such sewerage system; (5) that it should be upon a scale adequate to meet wants for at least thirty years after the completion of such work, the increase of population being liberally estimated; (6) that it should be capable of adaptation to methods of purification which may be found necessary by future experience; (8) that the upper Passaic and its tributaries should be placed under the protection of the same commission provided for in the act for the lower river, with adequate power to prevent pollution; (8) that the work be entered upon without delay, as the conditions are rapidly growing worse, and the time required for the construction of a sewerage system for the lower Passaic will be considerable.