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

Heading: Severability of Appurtenant Rights

Text: Unlike riparian rights, appurtenant water rights are incidents of land ownership. In the first of our recorded cases governing water rights the nature and foundation of these rights were described thusly: [When a grantor] has conveyed portions [of an] ahupuaa to several persons ... [e]ach grantee will hold all that has been conveyed to him, unless it should conflict with a previous conveyance. This includes the [artificial] water on their lands and all the water which the lands had enjoyed from time immemorial. Peck v. Bailey, supra at 662. These rights were characterized by the court as appurtenant to ... lands, id., and superior to riparian rights inasmuch as they constituted an easement in favor of the [property with an appurtenant right] as the dominant estate. Id. Thus, appurtenant water rights are rights to the use of water utilized by parcels of land at the time of their original conversion into fee simple land. In McBryde v. Robinson , supra, we ruled that the appurtenant nature of these rights precluded the transfer of such waters. We said [t]he use of the water acquired as appurtenant rights may only be used in connection with that particular parcel of land to which the right is appurtenant, overruling any contrary indications in our caselaw. 54 Haw. at 191, 504 P.2d at 1341. The trial court in this case read the foregoing limitation to preclude the severance of such rights so that the deeds purporting to transfer or reserve plaintiffs' water rights were of no effect with respect to any appurtenant rights which attached to their lands. We agree that the rule posited in McBryde prevents the effective severance or transfer of appurtenant water rights. This position is consistent with the general rule that appurtenant easements attach to the land to be benefited and cannot exist or be utilized apart from the dominant estate. ALI, Restat.Prop. § 487, comment b. We find, however, that while no appurtenant rights were effectively transferred in this case, the deed that attempted to reserve such rights had the effect of extinguishing them. For while easements appurtenant may not be utilized for other than the dominant estate, [t]here is nothing to prevent a transferor from effectively providing that the benefit of an easement appurtenant shall not pass to the transferee of the dominant [estate]. Id. There appears to be no question here that the plaintiffs' grantors, in attempting to reserve the water rights to themselves in spite of the transfer of the lands, intended to extinguish those rights which would otherwise have attached to plaintiffs' lands. While the nature of the water rights involved necessarily precluded the former, nothing would preclude the giving of effect to the latter. Thus, while the trial court correctly ruled that the BWS could not have acquired the appurtenant water rights of the plaintiffs because of McBryde, it erred in holding that the plaintiffs' lands retained such rights, inasmuch as they were effectively extinguished by the attempted reservation of such rights.