Opinion ID: 889492
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Clark Fork River

Text: ถ 192 PPL's evidence concerning the navigability of the Clark Fork River included the 1891 Army Corps of Engineers Report submitted to Congress. After evaluating the Clark Fork River, including the portions at issue here, the Report concluded, [i]t is a mountain torrential stream, full of rocks, rapids and falls, and is utterly unnavigable, and incapable of being made navigable except at an enormous cost.  (Emphasis added.) The Report characterized the idea of transforming the Clark Fork River into a navigable river as an absurdity. About fifty years later, Major Mark Boatner of the Army Corps of Engineers confirmed the observations of the 1891 Report by responding to a request to determine whether the Clark Fork River was navigable: Receipt is acknowledged of your letter of November 14, 1940, in which you request the opinion of this office as to the navigable status of Clark's Fork of the Columbia River between Pend O'Reille [ sic ] Lake, Idaho, and the mouth of the Blackfoot River, a few miles above Missoula, Montana. For the purpose of administering the laws for the preservation and improvement of navigable waters of the United States, this Department considers Clark Fork navigable from its mouth in Pend O'Reille [sic] Lake to the Northern Pacific Railroad Bridge, a distance of only about four miles. (Emphasis added.) Major Boatner's view was that the entire Clark Fork, with the exception of the referenced four-mile reach, was non-navigable. Thus, PPL's dam, which Professor Emmons explained was far downstream from the four-mile stretch, was in waters the Corps considered non-navigable. [5] ถ 193 PPL also offered judicial decrees. In 1910, the Federal District Court of Montana concluded the Clark's Fork of the Columbia River in Sanders County, Montana, which PPL asserts is the location of its dam, was and is a non-navigable stream incapable of carrying the products of the country in the usual manner of water transportation and that Northwestern Development Company, not the State, owned the portions of the streambeds at issue before the federal court. Steele v. Donlan, In Equity No. 950 (D.Mont. July 14, 1910). ถ 194 Reviewing the evidence, Professor Emmons concluded his analysis by stating, [C]redible evidence from the Corps of Engineers and the Montana federal court, roughly contemporaneous with statehood, leads me to conclude that the Clark Fork River in Sanders County was not a navigable highway for commerce at statehood. ถ 195 Again, PPL also cast doubt on the evidence offered by the State. The State relied upon a document described as the Clark Fork Corps Report, despite the fact it did not contain any title page or other indication of author, date of preparation, or purpose. Professor Emmons first criticized the State's attribution of the Report to the Corps of Engineers: [The] report[][was] not prepared by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. . . as the State contends, but rather [][was] prepared for the Corps, and thus do[es] not carry any imprimatur of credibility that might be associated with an actual Corps Report. There is no indication in the evidence provided by the State that the Corps ever adopted the conclusions made or concurred in these so-called Corps Reports. (Emphasis in original.) Emmons then attacked the substance of the Report, stating that it relied on untrustworthy historical sources . . . to reach conclusions regarding historical use of the rivers. Emmons explained the State's use of the Clark Fork Corps Report was fallacious in three ways: (a) [the State] has taken secondary sources based on less than credible historical evidence; (b) attributed them to the more authoritative Corps of Engineers; and (c) proffered them as historical evidence of the historical use of the rivers. Similarly, the State's reliance on the under-funded 1986 Montana Navigable Water Study was flawed because the Study had mischaracterized an article published in the Missoulian on February 24, 1882. The Study claimed logs were floated to Weeksville, Montana, and down the Clark Fork River. However, Emmons quoted the language of the article, which actually stated that Weeksville was situated near the river in a body of fine timber and when the supply of logs in the immediate neighborhood gives out, they can be floated right to the locality down the Missoula and Pend d'Oreille rivers. (Misspelling in original, emphasis added by Emmons.) In pointing out the flawed logic in the Study, Emmons opined that [t]here is a considerable difference historically between a frontier-era newspaper claiming that logs could be floated down a river and credible evidence that logs were actually floated down the river. (Emphasis in original.) Thus, Emmons concluded that the State's evidence lacks the credibility to prove anything about the historical use of the Clark Fork River. (Emphasis in original.) ถ 196 In granting summary judgment to the State, the District Court relied on cases addressing the federal government's power to regulate commerce under the Commerce Clause. See e.g. Mont. Power Co., 8 F.P.C. 751, 1949 WL 1102 (F.P.C.1949); Wash. Water Power Co., 10 F.P.C. 657, 1951 WL 1856 (F.P.C.1951); Wash. Water Power Co., 14 F.P.C. 731, 1955 WL 3030 (F.P.C.1955). While these commercial, non-title cases admittedly held that the Clark Fork River was navigable at the time of statehood for that purpose, these rulings are of no consequence in light of this case's procedural posture. This is a title navigability case at the summary judgment stage. PPL set forth clear evidence of non-navigability, and construing that evidence in its favor, we must assume from that evidenceโuntil a trialโthat the navigability of the Clark Fork River is a genuine issue of material fact. Instead, the District Court, and now this Court, has taken upon itself the role of factfinder, weighing PPL's evidence and concluding that it lacks credibility, rendering it mere conclusory statements. Opinion, ถ 103.