The next step in the development of the water-storage movement was the creation of the River Improvement Commission by act of the Legislature in 1904. The creation of that Commission was the only practical outcome of the valuable report on the causes and remedies of floods in New York rivers made by the Water Storage Commission in 1903. The River Improvement Commission was invested with power to make preliminary investigations, plans, and surveys for the regulation of the course of any stream, of which the restricted or unrestricted or irregular flow should be shown by petition of local residents to be a menace to the public health and safety of the community. If the improvement appeared to be of sufficient importance and the Legislature approved, the Commission was then authorized to carry out the project and to assess the cost of the same according to the benefits received by the various individuals and the properties benefited. To provide for carrying on the work pending the collection of such assessments, authority was given the Commission by the act to issue certificates of indebtedness, or to sell bonds, to be retired on the collection of the cost from the beneficiaries. That Commission was composed principally of State officers as ex-officio members, and while its work was excellent its progress was unavoidably slow.
While the River Improvement Commission was still in existence, the State Water Supply Commission was created in 1905; the primary object of its creation being to insure an equitable apportionment of the sources for public water supplies among the various municipalities and civil divisions of the State. The Legislature apparently had a very clear conception of the need for such a State agency and hence created the Water Supply Commission with those specific powers. It soon became apparent that this Commission was in better position than the River Improvement Commission to study flood conditions, involved as they were with the general subject of water supply; so that by Act of the Legislature in 1906 the River Improvement Commission was discontinued as a separate board, and all its powers and duties were transferred to the State Water Supply Commission.
The jurisdiction of the Water Supply Commission was thus considerably broadened to include the study of water storage on a large scale. Its powers and duties were subsequently extended to an investigation of water-powers within the State, and the preparation of a plan for their general development. The Commission is therefore engaged in three distinct but closely related lines of work: (1) the apportionment of municipal water supplies; (2) the improvement of rivers in the interest of public health and safety; and (3) the formulation of a plan for the general development of the water-power resources of the State.
Municipal Water Supplies
In practically working out a comprehensive plan for water conservation, the State has rightly begun with the matter of public water supplies. Previous to the establishment of the Water Supply Commission, the laws of the State permitted any city, village, or other municipal corporation to acquire or condemn lands for sources of water supply practically at will, and without regard to whether its plans were just and equitable to other municipalities and their inhabitants that might be affected thereby. Thus, a large city armed with the power of eminent domain might take territory from a smaller community regardless of the present or prospective needs of the latter for the water sources thus appropriated. In fact, the people of the community invaded did not always have the foresight to realize that they would sooner or later require those sources for themselves. It can readily be seen that such a course might involve a serious menace to the future growth of the smaller community. Fear of such procedure led to the passage of special prohibitory laws for many localities, particularly those adjoining New York City, against what was feared might be the ruthless exercise of the great power of the larger community. The effect of such legislation, involving as it did so much hostility between the different localities of the State, proved that the then current practice afforded but a partial, inadequate, and unfair method of administering the distribution of sources of water supply.
Provision for a pure and adequate supply of water for domestic purposes for all its inhabitants is one of the first duties of the sovereign State. Through its important effect upon public health alone, the general use of pure water is a matter of the gravest importance to every man, woman, and child regardless of local divisions of government or grouping of citizens. It was with a realization of these principles that the Legislature of 1905 wisely determined to delegate the power of control over the selection of sources of public water supply to a permanent commission which, by the aid of constant and special consideration of this subject, should become expert in controlling such selection so as to insure equity, among all the inhabitants and civil divisions of the State, and the resulting unimpeded prosperity, growth and comfort of each and every community. The law, therefore, provides that no municipality, or person, or water-works corporation engaged in supplying the inhabitants of any municipal corporation with water shall have power to acquire lands for any new or additional sources of water supply until its plans have been submitted to, and approved by, the Water Supply Commission.
In passing upon plans thus submitted to it, the Commission is empowered to determine: (1) whether the proposed plans are justified by the public necessities of the community; (2) whether the plans are just and equitable to other communities, special consideration being given to future as well as present needs for water supplies; and (3) whether the plans make fair and equitable provision for the determination and payment of any and all damages, both direct and indirect, which will result from their execution.
Under the operation of this law, which appears to have set a precedent among the States of the Union in the general State administration of water-supply resources, there has resulted a smoothly adjusted progress in the development of public water supplies, without further need of appeal to the Legislature for the drastic prohibitory special legislation formerly so much sought after.
It is thus well established in the public law of New York State that the control of sources of water supply is a State function, and that all persons or municipalities must apply to the central State Government and receive permission to take what may be determined to be a just share from the State's total supply of this indispensable resource. It must, therefore, be evident that the State should aim toward an ideal of administration of its water resources which would secure fully and impartially the rights of each and every one of its inhabitants and all of their local groupings to a just and equitable share of the public waters. This problem becomes especially complicated under our modern conditions of civilization which in promoting the growth of enormous cities, call for engineering works of the greatest scope and magnitude for the purpose of providing the requisite quantity of pure and wholesome water.
One of the most recent and familiar illustrations of this fact is the present vast undertaking of New York City, which at a cost of about $161,000,000, is going 90 miles to the Catskill Mountains to secure a water supply which its engineers estimate will be sufficient for its needs for only a comparatively few years. In this great project, as well as in the case of many others not so great, there is involved a large element of hardship and damage to the locality invaded, in the necessary taking of private property for the larger public water supply by constructing immense storage reservoirs which permanently occupy the lands thus acquired, and furnish no considerable means of support and prosperity to the region—as is the case when land is acquired for railroad purposes.