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Show NEW YORK 545 the natural flow theory, and which caused much consternation among industrial water users and water project planners.127 However, even in the nine cases mentioned, the courts seemed to be interested in protecting reasonable water uses, or prospects of reasonable future uses. The latter phrase relates to those cases where the complaining riparian owner was making nominal or no use of the water, but where the defendant was making what clearly ap- peared to be an unreasonable use which, over time, would ripen into a prescriptive right and foreclose any subsequent reasonable use by the complainant. Thus, the court was willing to award nominal damages (but no injunction) to a plaintiff when the defendant manufacturer: diverted into their race nearly the whole volume of the stream, daring a con- siderable portion of each year, leaving only the small part which escaped from the dam through leakage to flow past the plaintiff's [land].128 While defendant's use did not interfere with any present use which plaintiff was making of the stream, after 20 years it would become a prescriptive right and any subsequent exercise by plaintiff of his riparian rights would be limited to the small seepage flow, and the court pointedly noted that the defendant's use should not become a right in such fashion. In another case, where it appeared that an earlier award of damages to a plaintiff might not be sufficient to prevent the defendant from obtaining prescriptive rights, the court was willing to grant an injunction lest the use "become the founda- tion or evidence of an adverse right." 129 In two cases involving the city of Rochester,130 the court prevented the defendant city from withdrawing water from a stream for municipal supply, even though the city supplied replacement water from a lake during dry periods of the year and actually benefited the plaintiffs by supplying them with a more stable and reliable flow pattern. The court emphasized that plaintiffs' riparian rights attached to the natural flow and not imported substitute water, and this seemed to sound like the court was embracing the natural flow theory. But the court seemed most impressed with the fact that plaintiffs' mill operations could suffer substantial harm if the de- fendant city failed to continue to supply the substitute water. In the first case the court observed that "any artificial supply may be cut off by the persons who furnish it," 131 and in the second case that "the supplying of water from Candice Lake is a gratuitous act on the part of the city, and the plaintiff has no legal right to compel its continuance." 132 The court was thus unwilling to allow plaintiffs' established mill operations to depend upon the city's voluntary supply of substitute water, while the city diverted the water which plaintiffs historically had used. It was noted that the city had other options available to it to accomplish the same result, such as obtaining the consent of the 127 W. Farnham, note 5, p. 27, at 378 et seq. 128 New York Rubier Co. v. Bothery, 132 N.Y. 293, 30 N.E. 841 (1892). ™ Amsterdam Knitting Oo. v. Dean, 162 N.Y. 278, 6 N.E. 757 (1900). wo Smith v. City of Rochester, 38 Hun 612 (N.Y.S. Ct. 1886), aff'd 104 N.Y. 674 (1887) ; Neal v. City of Rochester, 156 N.Y. 213, 50 N.E. 803 (1898). i» Smith v. Oj*j/ of Rochester, 38 Hun 612 (N.Y.S. Ct. 1886), aff'd 104 N.Y. 674 (1887). wNeal v. City of Rochester, 156 N.Y. 213, 50 N.E. 803 (1898). |