Opinion ID: 1706473
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Did Koch Have Superior Right to Water in Tributary?

Text: At common law, persons owning land bounding upon a watercourse were called riparian proprietors and possessed certain rights to use the water as an incident of ownership of the land. [19] The basic concept of riparian rights is that an owner of land abutting a waterbody has the right to have the water continue to flow across or stand on the land, subject to the equal rights of each owner to make proper use of the water. [20] As explained by one commentator: The doctrine of riparian rights is based upon the proposition that each riparian has a right to make a beneficial use of the water of the stream for any purpose so long as such use does not unreasonably interfere with the enjoyment of the same privilege by other riparians. [21] The riparian theory developed in England, at a time and in a climate where there was little use of water for irrigation. [22] Riparian rights extend only to the use of the water, not to its ownership; a riparian right is thus said to be usufruct only. [23] One of the most significant maxims of riparianism is that, unlike the rule of the prior appropriation system, there is no priority among riparian proprietors utilizing the supply. All riparian proprietors have an equal and correlative right to use the waters of an abutting stream. [24] Of equal importance with this maxim is that use of the water does not create the [riparian] right and disuse neither destroys nor qualifies the right. [25] In Meng v. Coffee, [26] a dispute among riparian landowners, this court noted that the common law considered running water publici juris, and while it will not permit any one man to monopolize all the water of a running stream when there are other riparian owners who need and may use it also, neither does it grant to any riparian owner an absolute right to insist that every drop of the water flow past his land exactly as it would in a state of nature. We further noted that the common-law rule gives a riparian landowner only a right to the benefit and advantage of the water flowing past his land so far as consistent with a like right in all other riparian owners. [27] The purpose of the common-law rule was to secure equality in the use of the water by riparian owners, as near as may be, by requiring each to exercise his rights reasonably and with due regard to the right of other riparian owners to apply the water to the same or to other purposes. [28] Under the common law, [i]f the rights of the upper owner in the water are no more than those of the lower owner, they are at the same time no less. [29] Applying these principles, we conclude as a matter of law that Koch could not have acquired any senior riparian right by constructing his dam in 1989. Any riparian right he may have to use water in the tributary would be equal and correlative to the rights of other riparian proprietors. The rights of one riparian landowner vis-a-vis another is determined by examining the reasonableness of each landowner's respective use of the water. [30]