Opinion ID: 2612541
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Severability of Riparian Rights

Text: Having acknowledged and ratified McBryde's vitality, we turn to the question of whether the riparian rights of the plaintiffs were effectively severed and transferred by the language of the various deeds of title purporting to do so. We conclude they were not. BWS argues, and we agree, that even the natural flow theory of riparianism does not, in most jurisdictions, prohibit the annulment or severance of riparian rights by contract. See, 1 Clark, Waters and Water Rights, 70 (1967). But riparian rights in Hawaii are of statutory rather than common law origin. The privileges and rights attaching to riparian land should therefore be determined consistently with the statute to which their genesis is traceable. Riparian rights in Hawaii are a product of the people's statutory rights to flowing and running water currently embodied in HRS § 7-1 (1976). HRS § 7-1 was originally enacted in 1850 as section 7 of what has come to be known as the Kuleana Act. The first six sections of the Act enabled the common people of Hawaii to secure fee simple title to the lands they actually cultivated. The seventh section contained the rights that were to accompany a commoner's tenancy. The section was drafted at the behest of the King and was reported to reflect his concern that [a] little bit of land even with allodial title, if they be cut off from all other privileges would be of very little value. Privy Council Minutes, July 13, 1850. Thus, it appears that the riparian water rights of HRS § 7-1 were established to enable tenants of ahupuaas to make productive use of their lands. Riparian rights in Hawaii are thus analogous to the federally reserved water rights accruing to Indian reservations pursuant to Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564, 28 S.Ct. 207, 52 L.Ed. 340 (1908). In words reminiscent of Hawaii's King, the Supreme Court has described that decision as follows: The Court in Winters concluded that the Government, when it created [an] Indian Reservation, intended to deal fairly with the Indians by reserving for them the waters without which their lands would have been useless. Arizona v. California, 373 U.S. 546, 600, 83 S.Ct. 1468, 1497, 10 L.Ed.2d 542 (1963). The Court in Winters thus implied from a treaty establishing the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation a reservation of enough unappropriated waters to fulfill the purposes of the treaty. The issue of the transferability of Indian water rights vested pursuant to the Winters doctrine has also arisen. See generally Palma, Considerations and Conclusions Concerning the Transferability of Indian Water Rights, 20 Nat.Res.J. 91 (1980). We find a particular federal court's treatment of this analogous situation instructive. In Colville Confederated Tribes v. Walton, 460 F. Supp. 1320 (E.D.Wash. 1978), the question before the court was whether the water rights reserved to Indian reservations were effectively transferred to subsequent non-Indian purchasers of reservation lands. The court, looking to the underlying rationale for the implied reservation of water, concluded that they were not. Id. at 1328. It reasoned that since, under the Winters doctrine, water was impliedly reserved to ensure that the land set aside for a permanent homeland would have water necessary for the purposes of the reservation, the water right was implicitly limited to purposes of the reservation and were therefore extinguished when the lands passed from Indian hands. Cf. Cappaert v. United States, 426 U.S. 128, 141, 96 S.Ct. 2062, 2070, 48 L.Ed.2d 523 (1976) (implied federal reservations of water limited to only that amount necessary to fulfill the purposes of the reservation, no more.). But see United States v. Adair, 478 F. Supp. 336 (D.Ore. 1979) (permitting transfer of Winters doctrine rights because it would advance the purpose of permitting Indians to sell their lands on equal terms with non-Indians). We find such reasoning highly persuasive and applicable to the situation before us. And we likewise conclude that the nature of the water rights provided in HRS § 7-1 are limited by the purposes for their establishment. We are equally convinced that the creation of an independent source of profit for the possessors of water rights was not included among such purposes. The language of the statute itself, referring specifically to other articulated rights, provides that privileges enumerated in that section were for their [the people's] own use, but they shall not have the right to take such articles to sell for profit. HRS § 7-1. We conclude that the riparian water rights created by HRS § 7-1 were not intended to be, and cannot be, severed from the land in any fashion. Their sole purpose is to provide water to make tenants' lands productive  no other incident of ownership attached. The trial judge in this case thus correctly ruled that all attempts to sever or extinguish the riparian rights of the plaintiffs were ineffective. Additional support for this conclusion is found in Damon v. Tsutsui, 31 Haw. 678 (1930), which involved an attempt by a landlord to sever by deed certain fishing rights that had been statutorily reserved to tenants. The court held the attempted severance was without effect as to the original tenant's successor in interest. It reasoned that the severance was ineffective because the fishing rights simply were not the landlord's to convey because the tenant receives his rights through the statute, (emphasis added) id. at 689, rather than from his predecessor in interest. Here, as in Damon, the riparian rights purportedly reserved in the plaintiff's respective deeds were statutory creations. They were therefore not subject to reservation by deed; they were not the grantor's to reserve.