Ensign

Petitioner, to whom the board of trustees of the city of Dinuba awarded a contract for the performance of certain public work, brings this proceeding in mandamus to compel respondent, as the city superintendent of streets, to execute the contract.

The city of Dinuba, a municipal corporation of the sixth .class, is provided with a complete sewer system. It owns a parcel of land outside of and distant about two miles from its corporate limits, on which it has constructed a sewage disposal plant, consisting of a septic tank and its appurtenances, constructed some years ago for the disposal of the city sewage. That part of the municipal sewer system which lies within the corporate limits of the city is connected with the septic tank by a main sewer line, owned and maintained by the city, and extended to the outside parcel of land on which the septic tank is situated.

So greatly has the population of the municipality increased since the construction of the present septic tank, that the existing sewage disposal plant, of which the tank is the principal constituent, is now wholly inadequate—so much so that the sewage from the city overflows the septic tank and the effluent therefrom…