US Laws, Codes, Statutes & Cases

 
    §  5-355  Condemnation proceedings. a. It shall be lawful for the city
  to acquire by condemnation any real estate or any interest therein  that
  may  be necessary in order to acquire the sole and exclusive property in
  the source or sources of water supply,  which  may  be  needed  for  the
  supply  of  the  public waterworks of the city, and to wholly extinguish
  the water rights of any person or corporation therein, with the right to
  lay, relay, repair and maintain aqueducts, conduits and water pipes with
  the connections and fixtures on the lands of others, and, if  necessary,
  to  acquire  by  condemnation  lands  for  such purpose in any county or
  counties through which it may be necessary to pass  in  conducting  such
  waters  to  the  city. The city shall have the right to intercept and to
  direct the flow of water from lands of riparian owners, and from persons
  owning or interested in any water, and the right to prevent the flow  or
  drainage  of noxious or impure matters from the lands of others into its
  reservoirs or sources of supply.
    b. The city, however, shall not have power to acquire or to extinguish
  the property rights of any person or corporation  in  or  to  any  water
  rights   that   at  the  time  of  the  initiation  of  proceedings  for
  condemnation are in actual use for the supply of the waterworks  of  the
  people  of  any  other  city,  town  or village of the state, or for the
  supply and distribution of waters to the people thereof, or which in the
  opinion of the court on such proceedings may reasonably become necessary
  for such supply, or to take or use the water from any of the  canals  of
  the  state,  any canal reservoirs, or waters used exclusively as feeders
  for canals, or from any  of  the  streams  acquired  by  the  state  for
  supplying the canals with water.
    c.  The city shall not acquire by condemnation any property or factory
  in Putnam county which has been  used  for  twenty-five  years  for  the
  manufacture  of  food  products;  nor acquire by condemnation any lands,
  easements, streams or water, or water rights, on the east branch of  the
  Croton  river,  below  the village of Brewster in the town of Southeast,
  Putnam county, for the construction of any  reservoir,  in  which  water
  will  or  may  be impounded at a higher level than three hundred and ten
  feet above tide water at the city.