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<br />44 <br /> <br />= <br />w <br />en <br />N <br /> <br />whether responsibility exists in international law for the <br />discharge of highly saline ground waters into an interlm- <br />tional river which causes substantial injury to a lower <br />riparian state. Cases of an international 'character dealing <br />with analogous qucstions of pollution which wc have found <br />contain no definition of that term. It thus ma.y a.lso be <br />noted at the outset that at present there exists no defini- <br />tion in international law of the term "pollution." '7 <br /> <br />1. International Judicial Decisions-The Trail <br />Smeller Arbitration" <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />Pursuant to convention between the United States and <br />Canada signed at Ottawa on April 15, 1935, a tribunal was <br />constituted to decide a controversy between the two gov- <br />ernments involving damage occurring in the territory of <br />the United States alleged to have been caused by a smelter <br />located in Canada. Large quantities of lead and zinc were <br />smelted at a place in British Columbia named Trail, the <br />smelter being located about seven miles above the boundary <br />line. Two stacks, 409 feet in height, had been erected at <br />the smelter in 1925 and 1927 and thereafter sulphur dioxide <br />fumes emerged in large volume from the stacks, finding <br />their way into upper air currents and being carried by such <br />currents across the boundary with the result that damage <br />was caused to areas in the State of Washington. <br />The tribunal" was invested with the duty to answer, inter <br />alia, the following questions: <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />67 The Second Report of the Rapporteur of tho Committee on The Uses of <br />tho Waters of Interufttional Rivers, International Law Association, contains the <br />following definition of the term "pollution"; "Pollution is any artificial <br />chango in tho natural quality of any particu1a.r natural wator." Report of <br />the Forty-Eighth Conference, International Law Ass 'n (New York 1958) 87. <br /> <br />68 Trail Smelter Arbitration (U.S.A.jCanada), III U.N. Rep. Int'l Arb. <br />Awards 1911 (Decision of Apl'i116, 1938), 1935 (Decision of March 11, 1941). <br /> <br />GO The arbitral tribunal established by the two countries did not sit to pass <br />upon claims presented by individuals. It was noted, however, that damago <br />suffored by individuals nfforded, in part, "a convenient scale for the calcula- <br />tion of the reparation due to tho State." III U.N. Rep. Int'l Arb. Awards <br />at 1913. <br /> <br />-- ..~~-. .~,.,_..,..-.."",~.- -.- ._------~- -.....,.-. , '. <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />