Concern over such claims did not go unnoticed in the halls of official Kingston. A 1905 year-end report by the city’s corporation counsel, Augustus Van Buren, for example, offered that 17 actions had been brought against the city “to recover damages for the diversion of waters of the Sawkill Creek and the Mink Hollow stream.” Noting that he had previously urged the city to utilize proper proceedings in such matters (as had the judge in the Simpkins’ case), Van Buren openly and honestly criticized the very government that employed him. “The parties,” he wrote, “who have brought these suits will, in my judgment, recover some damages.” And, while some officials in the city, according to Van Buren, had urged “that every such case be fought to the end no matter what merit it may have,” the city’s counsel rejected bringing untoward pressure on those with legitimate claims, stating simply, “because the city can force a man who has not the money to fight a law suit to settle for less than is justly due him, is no reason why it should do so.”
On some level, it appears that the admonishments of Van Buren began to register. In the spring of the following year, the Kingston board of commissioners appointed a committee to properly obtain additional land around Cooper Lake, charging the committee’s members to seek the property through purchase or, having failed, to initiate legal proceedings of condemnation. At the same time, Van Buren’s opinion that some with claims against the city would, eventually, recover damages proved correct as farmer and mill operator Andrew Goodrich, whose family had occupied their Mink Hollow property for over a century, won his claim against the city. Though Goodrich would not receive the total claim for damages requested, his argument that “he and his predecessors had a right to the waters of the stream for their mill” won the favor of the court.
Beyond the lawsuits, questions of water flow, mills and water rights, the early days of Kingston’s exercise of control over Woodstock’s waters struck an additional nerve with locals when prohibition against fishing in Cooper Lake was threatened. As early as 1903, Woodstockers were upset over limited access to one of their favorite fishing spots (especially if you liked pickerel). As offered in an article in the Freeman, the threat to fishing in Cooper Lake caused more consternation in town than where, for example, the new state road would go and that “Lake Hillers and Wittenbergers (had) for nonce buried the hatchet against a common enemy.” That “common enemy,” of course, was Kingston and its efforts to protect against any fouling of their drinking water. In citing the controversy, the Freeman went on to say, “The city of Kingston is very particular about its water, and the water board claims that if fishing is allowed, the privilege will be abused, and fish will be cleaned on the banks of the lake and so pollute the waters.” Needless to say, such logic left even the “Lake Hillers” and the “Wittenbergers” more than a bit perplexed — and probably trying to remember where they put their hatchets.
If fishing — and putting some extra food on the table — was personal in the early days of the twentieth century, nothing got more personal for Woodstockers than when the city of Kingston began to go after the privies of homeowners along the town’s waterways.
In a 1902 report to the Governor, the state’s Department of Health set forth the rules and regulations for the “sanitary protection of the Sawkill, Cooper Lake and the Mink Hollow Creek…” The report, which ran some five pages, covered the responsibilities of property owners along waterways that fed Kingston’s water supply. With regard to privies within fifty feet of a stream, for example, the report explicitly stated that owners “shall house, under seats, half barrels, tubs, pails or water-tight boxes or troughs, arranged to be easily removed, emptied, cleaned and returned to their places under the privy seats.” (Still yearn for simpler days?) In addition to addressing privies, the report also covered other potential sources of pollution, including slops, laundry water, garbage, animal manure, washing animals and manufacturing waste.
I can not think of anything more egregious than a world in which corporate bottled water came from places such as this. Tell them no till doomsday.