Court Opinion

ID: 9856939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 07:07:43.528356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:35.121688
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
I am concurring in the opinion of the Court, but I am not convinced that the trial court properly determined the line of ordinary high water. Justice McFadden has been careful to point out that the holding of the Court here “is based upon the particular facts and circumstances presented in this case.” The rationale of the opinion today is that, from the testimony of Mr. Scribner, *802the district court reasonably could find that the line established by Mr. Scribner “was the line of ordinary high water, and thus the judgment of the district court is supported by competent and substantial evidence.”
As the Court’s opinion ably points out, Mr. Scribner from a visual observation concluded where he' thought the line of ordinary high water should be, and then applied his own theory of a vegetation test to substantiate it. In applying his theory, he did not seek to establish the point at which terrestrial vegetation ceased entirely because of inundation, but differentiated amongst the various species of terrestrial vegetation growing above and below his preconceived conclusion of the location of the line of ordinary high water. Counsel for Heckman’s objected when Mr. Scribner was asked to identify an exhibit (plaintiff’s No. 123) which was a listing of various species of vegetation which he “collected below the natural and ordinary high waterline.” Counsel properly pointed out that the witness, Mr. Scribner, was assuming the location of the line of ordinary high water, and that location was precisely the issue which the trial court was called upon to resolve. The court did not sustain the objection, the court assuming that Mr. Scribner “will connect that up so his testimony here has some meaning Short minutes later, the objection was renewed, and again overruled. Shortly after that Mr. Scribner was asked for his opinion as to what plants grow below his line of ordinary high water, and the testimony was received without objection.
For the limited purpose of the statute involved, “natural or ordinary high water mark” is defined “to be the line which the water impresses on the soil by covering it for sufficient periods to deprive the soil of its vegetation and destroy its value for agricultural purposes.” I.C. § SS-HM^),1 Immediately after the definition there follows in the statute this caveat: “Provided that this definition shall not be construed so as to affect or change the vested property rights of either the state of Idaho or of riparian or littoral property owners.” Id. Mr. Scribner is employed by the Department of Lands and is chief of the Bureau of Navigable Waters. To him, according to his testimony, falls the task, in quiet title actions involving lands along Idaho’s rivers, of making “the determination of the vegetation, where the water line is and where we think it is in relation to our ownership, the state’s ownership.”
In my view, the testimony was improper and should not have served as a valid predicate upon which to base a determination of the line of ordinary high water. But, it was received without objection, and the trial court cannot be said to be in error in considering it, in fact utilizing it as the basis of his decision.
Mr. Scribner testified that he started with that statutory definition of line of ordinary high water in his effort to establish the river-side boundary of the Heckman property. This definition was included as a part of the 1967 amendment, Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 236(9), to I.C. § 58-104, which declares the powers and duties of the State Land Board, and placed that Board in supervision of the use or disposition of land in the beds of navigable waters “to the natural or ordinary high water mark.” Id.
While it is readily seen that Mr. Scribner’s official position required him to ascertain the boundaries of the lake and riverbeds which I.C. § 58-104(9) placed under the supervisory jurisdiction of the State Land Board, Mr. Scribner should have felt obligated to respect the caveat of that section above set forth, and, rather than devise his own type-of-vegetation interpretation of that section, he should have given due regard to the source of the statutory definition. The record does not show that he was informed from whence that definition came.
*803The definition used by the legislature in 1964 did not originate with that body, but was adopted from this Court’s definition, one by which the property rights of riparian or littoral owners have been both vested and determined for many years. The legislature quite obviously was knowledgeable of what the Court, over a quarter of a century ago, said in Driesbach v. Lynch, 71 Idaho 501, 506, 234 P.2d 446, 448 (1951), where the Court held that “[t]he natural or ordinary high water mark is that line which the water impresses on the soil by covering it for sufficient periods to deprive the soil of its vegetation and destroys its value for agricultural purposes.”
In that case, the Court agreed that the evidence substantiated the trial court decision, “both with reference to the point of the natural or ordinary high water line and with reference to the absence of vegetation growing upon each parcel of land below the line found as the natural or ordinary high water line . . .” Id. (emphasis added).
The legislature may not have realized, however, that the definition which it adopted had its origin even earlier than Dreisbach. Almost 60 years ago, in Raide v. Dollar, 34 Idaho 682, 203 P. 469 (1921), the Court first stated that same rule, adopting it from the Missouri Supreme Court’s holding in State ex rel. Citizens’ Electric Lighting & Power Co. v. Longfellow, 169 Mo. 109, 69 S.W. 374 (1902). Whether or not the legislature knew that the Court’s rule dated back to 1921, the 1967 legislature had well in mind that the law in Idaho had been settled for many years; the caveat in the 1967 amendment clearly shows legislative recognition that property rights of riparian and littoral owners had become vested and should not become in any way unsettled by reason of placing the State Land Board in charge of lake and river beds. In other words, the 1967 amendment did not, nor did it purport to, make any change whatever in the existing law earlier declared in Raide and reaffirmed in Driesbach. Just the opposite is this case.
Such being so, Mr. Scribner, as Director of the Bureau of Navigable Waters, should have been directed to decision law rather than botany as his guide in his attempt to determine the extent of the domain which the State Land Board became empowered to administer as a result of the 1967 amendment. He chose, however, to apply the statutory definition by seeking out distinctions (which may have seemed reasonable to him) as to which types of vegetation might be classified as belonging below the line of ordinary high water, and which as belonging above that line. The legislature conferred no such power on the State Land Board, and in fact admonished to the contrary. For over 60 years it has been well-understood and accepted in Idaho that where the vegetation test is useable, in the absence of a clearly discernible water mark, it is the absence of any terrestrial vegetation which has been the determining factor.
Close attention is also directed to Mr. Scribner’s testimony wherein, in addition to basing the accuracy of his placement of the line of ordinary high water, he emphasized that the land (which he considered below the line of ordinary high water) was unsuitable for agricultural purposes. Here again his conclusions were premised upon his own interpretation of the statute, and for land to qualify in his opinion as suitable for agricultural purposes, it would have to be capable of cultivation for crops, or, at a minimum, have utility as “hay ground or relatively high quality pasture land.” For my part, I am unable to see that Mr. Scribner, or anyone on behalf of the state of Idaho, is in any way justified in impressing onto the statutory and court definitions that pasture land must be of “relatively high quality.” Pasture land is pasture land, and it is nonetheless pasture land even though it be of a low quality, perhaps a very low quality. If it will pasture on animal, such is an agricultural purpose. And a fortiori, it will not pasture even one animal unless it sustains vegetation.
Concluding, I suggest also that the trial court decision in all likelihood is premised upon a faulty definition of the line of ordinary high water. In the Court’s lead opinion, Justice McFadden observes that the trial court here held that “land inundated for only a small portion of the year was *804below the natural or ordinary high water mark of the river.” That it was so inundated for a small portion of the year immediately gives concern that such river level is not, but is well above, the ordinary line of high water. The Salmon is not a little-known river, and the record here adequately shows that in the vicinity in question, it is a fast river. In the annual spring run-offs it is a torrential white-water river, as are many of the rivers in Idaho which are fed annually in the late spring and early summer when the winter snows rapidly melt into billions of gallons of water. Other rivers, such as the Snake and Portneuf in southeastern Idaho, and the Kootenai in Boundary County, rise dramatically, overflowing their banks, but these do not have the rapid descent as does the Salmon, and hence do not have the resultant force which the Salmon has in the area in question.
There is with all rivers a time of high water and a time of low water. The time of ordinary high water is the late spring or early summer, when the rivers are fed regularly by the melting snows at the upper elevations of the mountains. In time those snows are gone, and there comes the time of low waters. Almost at the same time new snows come on the mountains, but the seasons change, and the snow does not melt.
The time of ordinary high water is not to be confused with the annual spring flood waters, however. These are times when weather turns warm and much snow melts, and the rivers rise drastically, taking maybe 2 weeks to peak, and 2 weeks or so to recede. The receding returns the river to its line of ordinary high water.
With that in mind, it should be noted that here the evidence showed that in 2 years, 1966 and 1973, the peak flood waters did not even enter the secondary channel. In the last 15 years, the waters of the Salmon were in the secondary channel only an average of 31 days per year — otherwise put, the channel in those years was dry 11 months out of every 12. This is about the normal time that the rivers are in flood stage, and it is not easy to understand how the district court could find the secondary channel to be below the line of ordinary high water. Apparently, and as I read the decision, it is attributable wholly to the sparsity of vegetation, and the types of vegetation as testified to by Mr. Scribner. As a matter of law, under those records, it would seem that the secondary channel is not a part of the bed of the Salmon River, but is a channel which has been cut and continued by the great annual spring runoffs, and it is clearly these great flood waters rushing downward which have moved boulders and carried away much loose soil.
The language of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is a true statement of the law and apparently should be repeated here as a caution that this particular case affirmed today not be taken as establishing the law:
For the purposes of this appeal it is sufficient to state that appellants’ theory is founded on the mistaken assumption that the annual spring floods of the river (suffered prior to the advent of Hoover Dam), which covered the valley from bluff to bluff, constituted its “ordinary high water” and that the valley, from bluff to bluff, thus constituted the bed of the river. By eliminating these floods, appellants contend, the Hoover Dam caused an avulsive change in the flow of the river so that the United States as riparian owner did not take title to the flood plain.
Appellants’ definition of “ordinary high water mark” is unsound. The District Court concluded, and we agree:
“The ordinary high water mark of a river is a natural physical characteristic placed upon the lands by the action of the river. It is placed there, and the name implies, from the ordinary flow of the river and does not extend to the peak flow or' flood stage so as to include overflow on the flood plain, nor is it confined to the lowest stages of the river flow.”
This is in accord with holdings of the Supreme Court.
United States v. Claridge, 416 F.2d 933, 934 (1969) (citations omitted) (emphasis added).

. The complete text of the sentence containing the definition reads: “The term ‘natural or ordinary high water mark’ as herein used shall be defined to be the line which the water impresses on the soil by covering it for sufficient periods to deprive the soil of its vegetation and destroy its value for agricultural purposes.” I.C. § 58-104(9) (emphasis added).