Source: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1130211
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 01:01:31+00:00

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42 CHARACTERISTICS OF WATERCOURSE The Texas Supreme Court also adopted a definition of the United States Supreme Court defining the interstate boundary line between Texas and Oklahoma100 as consistent with the Spanish or Mexican law on the sub- ject.101 This is to the effect that the banks of a stream are the water-washed and relatively prominent elevations of activities, commonly called "cut banks," at the outer lines of the streambed which separate the bed from the adjacent land, whether valley or hill, and which usually serve to confine the waters within the bed and to preserve the course of the river. The boundary between the States-or between public and private ownership along the banks of a navigable stream-is the mean level attained by the waters when they reach and wash the bank without overflowing it or, expressed differently, when they rise to the highest point at which they are still confined to a definite chan- nel.102 The Flood Plain The flood plain of an ordinary stream is a part of the watercourse. -The flood channel or flood plain of a live stream is the land adjacent to the ordinary channel that is overflowed in times of high water, from which the floodwaters return to the channel of the stream at lower points.103 In an ordinary situation, this is as much a part of the overall watercourse system as are its bed, banks, and ordinary channel. The Texas and Nebraska cases cited in the immediately preceding paragraph were concerned with obstructions of the flow of floodwaters within the flood plains of the streams, not with rights to the use of the water. On the other hand, in the California Supreme Court case cited above under "Bed and Banks or Sides-What constitutes bed and banks"-in which it was held that the bed of a river is bounded by its permanent and fast banks-the question was whether certain lands lying between some lower banks and the high banks of Ventura River were riparian to the river; and the court held that they were.104 The opinion in this case was written by a commissioner and concurred in by the justices of the California Supreme Court. The justices stated that "this case differs materially from the ordinary case where a stream 100 Oklahoma v. Texas, 260 U.S. 606, 631-632 (1923); Oklahoma v. Texas, 261 U.S. 340, 341-342 (1923); Oklahoma v. Texas, 265 U.S. 500, 501 (1924). 101 Motl v. Boyd, 116 Tex. 82, 109, 286 S. W. 458 (1926). 102 In Maufrais v. State of Texas, 142 Tex. 559, 565-566, 180 S. W. (2d) 144 (1944), the Texas Supreme Court again reviewed with approval the rules as to bed and banks that had been expressed in the previous decisions of the United States Supreme Court and that were followed in Motl v. Boyd, 116 Tex. 82, 109, 286 S. W. 458 (1926), and in Diversion Lake Co. v. Heath, 126 Tex. 129, 140-141, 86 S. W. (2d) 441 (1935). See also Heard v. Refugio, 129 Tex. 349, 352-353, 103 S. W. (2d) 728 (1937); andBrown v. Linkenhoger, 175 S. W. (2d) 975, 976 (Tex. Civ. App. 1943, error refused want merit). 103 Bass v. Taylor, 126 Tex. 522, 529-530, 90 S. W. (2d) 811 (1936);Bahm v. Raikes, 160 Nebr. 503, 514-515, 70 N. W. (2d) 507 (1955). 104 Ventura Land & Power Co. v. Meiners, 136 Cal. 284, 290-291, 68 Pac. 818 (1902).

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