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HISTORY AND LEGAL BACKGROUND OF STREAM POLLUTION CONTROL IN INDIANA
Robert Hollowell, Ir. • '
¦      Deputy Attorney General '• ¦    .    ; ¦ State of Indiana    '       ,   |
Indianapohs, Indiana
It is a dangerous thing to assign to a lawyer a topic concerning the legal background of something. Give him some topic not in¬ volving legal background and you have a chance, but start him off on a "legal background" and he is liable to dive into an Atlantic of legalistic phraseology and if he comes up at all it is likely to be on a syllogism for a raft. Another thing, throw a lawyer a "legal background" and he will come up with a brief. Call it a talk or what have you; it is very likely to be a brief, couched in legal style; a lawyer could no more help it than a dog can help scratching fleas. It's like a vaudeville sketch of Ed Wynn's in which he was a painter. He painted boats. One of his customers wanted him to paint a pic¬ ture of his ancestors. Ed insisted he couldn't paint ancestors, he only painted boats. However, after much persuasion he agreed to paint the ancestors but he warned his customer, "We'll- call them ancestors, but they will look like boats." .So, no matter how I may try to make this sound like a talk, it is more likely to sound Uke a brief.
Now I can't imagine any subject that would be more dry than the "Legal Background of Stream Pollution Control." When I say "dry" I don't mean the opposite of "wet" either, as anyone knows who ever got caught in a canoe in the middle of a polluted stream without a paddle. '. ;, , i.t'v:
It is an old saying that the best things corrupted become the worst. So with stream pollution. In the early days of this state settlements were located because of the availability of a stream of fresh pure water. The settlement grew and became a city, sewer systems were installed and emptied in the stream, industries de- velqped and dumped their waste in the stream until it became an open sewer. So with time, the best thing the settlement had in its beginning became its worst.
Law has been defined as a rule of external human conduct com¬ manding that which is right and prohibiting that which is wrong. However, it is relative to time and place. It seeks the greatest bene¬ fit to the greatest number under the circumstances existing at the