ABSTRACT
On April 31, 1950, An Act respecting The KVP Company Limited received royal assent. With one stroke of the pen, the Ontario government wiped out an entire community’s property rights, and with them, citizens’ power to protect their river from an upstream polluter. The story of the KVP Act dramatically illustrates the significance of common law rights to clean water and governments’ willingness to override these rights in the name of the 72“public good.” It is a story about a community’s struggle for a clean river—a struggle against the pulp mill that dumped its wastes into it. The courts tried to protect the river; the government, concerned as always about jobs, protected the pollution.
