Sewer

A subterranean passage for drainage, usually constructed and maintained by a municipal corporation. Properly, a trench artificially made for the purpose of carrying water into the sea, river, or some other place of reception. Crabb, R. P. s.

113; Bennett v. New Bedford, 110 Mass. 433.

The authority to construct public sewers is not incident to corporate powers, if ample provision is made by general statutes; Bulger v. Eden, 82 Me. 352, 19 Atl. 829, 9 L. R. A. 205. The sewers of a city are its private property, and the citizens are alone interested therein; the general public of the state at large have no interest in them, and therefore the city may be liable for negligence in their construction; Donahoe v. Kansas City, 136 Mo. 657, 38 S. W. 571. The construction of a sewer is a private municipal enterprise, for the negligent control of which the city will be liable, under a charter providing for a revenue from its use; Ostrander v. Lansing, 111 Mich. 693, 70 N. W. 332. Merely granting a city authority by its charter to construct sewers to carry off refuse to a river does not make such use of the sewers a governmental act, freeing the city from personal liability for injuries therefrom; Platt v. Waterbury, 72 Conn. 531, 45 Atl. 154, 48 L. R. A. 691, 77 Am. Rep. 335. Legislative authority to a municipality to open and construct a sewer in a public street does not exempt the municipality from the duty of exercising due care in performing the work; Koontz v. District of Columbia, 24 App. D. C. 59; but a city is held not liable for damages resulting from its negligent and defective construction of a sluice for drainage, which it, since, to create such liability, the injurious act milst have been within the scope of its corporate powers as prescribed by its charter; Betham v. Philadelphia, 196 Pa. 302, 46 Atl. 448. Damages for the negligent construction of a sewer must be confined to actual, not prospective, damages at the time of suit; Nashville v. Comar, 88 Tenn. 415, 12 S. W. 1027, 7