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Archive for the ‘Water Regulation’ Category

Is the Missouri River a mere obstacle?

Posted on: August 2nd, 2017
by David Ganje

The 2018 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill just passed the U. S. House of Representatives on July 27th. Among other matters the bill attempts to address the ongoing issue of the Army Corps of Engineers proposed ‘surplus waters’ regulation. In a prior opinion piece as well as a letter to the Western States Water Council, both of which can be found on my website, I discuss the dangers of the Corps’ proposed rule. By its new proposed regulation the Corps wants to define ‘surplus water’ in order to control and obtain revenue from so-called surplus water in Corp-managed reservoirs. The new proposed rule is objected to and opposed by Indian tribes and several states. It must be reported just the same that none of these objecting parties effectively or productively advised Congress on this issue.

There is no question that the Corps is an essential agency in the operation of public dams, and in managing successful regional and national flood protection systems. The Corps’ value and success do not however justify its acquisitive effort to control waters to the prejudice legitimate public water claimants whether they are states or Indian tribes. The Corps is a regulatory monopoly with management over certain waters of the United States. The Corps is in effect the world’s largest civil engineering firm. As a federal agency it has been in existence since 1802 making the Corps one of the oldest federal agencies. The Corps outlasts president after president and has outlived every session of Congress since 1802. It is a powerful agency. Powerful agencies in Washington DC have a saying, ‘Don’t worry – we can outlast the summer help around here.’ By summer help they refer to the president and members of Congress.

The House of Representatives in the 2018 bill ‘requests’ that the surplus waters problem be fixed. The bill’s language does not resolve the issue or require the Corps to change its ways. The bill’s language merely makes a request. The bill states, “Surplus Water—The Committee urges the Corps to consider adoption of the alternative definition of ‘‘surplus water’’ excluding ‘‘natural flows’’ from stored water in the Missouri River mainstem reservoirs. . . .“

This is ineffective. The bill’s language was not written by an informed observer. Nor was it written by an informed participant in water rights. The bill’s language accomplishes nothing. Bureaucracies by their nature do not prefer change from the outside. Indeed, an established bureaucracy is inclined not move when nudged from without. It must be pushed. The problem at hand needs laser surgery, not placid ‘transparency.’ If the Army Corps is not required to correct its action, it will not.

What is the antidote for the bureaucratic creep? Money. Money can make an intransigent bureaucracy abide by elected official’s goals. Cut off money or reduce budgets. Money gets their attention. Certainly much more so than polite requests to comply with a preferred Congressional policy.

‘Requests’ given to teenagers and bureaucracies often result in verbal acquiescence but little real implementation. I should know. As a teenager I was given plenty of policies and requests by my parents. I dutifully confirmed receipt of parental policies, but if you were to check my activity in Aberdeen at around 11 p.m. on any given Saturday night you would find an absence of full implementation of the policies. When dealing with a teenager or a bureaucracy one cannot simply trust to the discretion of the recipient. To trust that the Corps will properly define ‘natural flows’ of public waters is a mistake. The Corps, under political pressure, started a study in 1985 to define the natural flows of rivers, but soon ‘abandoned’ the study. The Corps will never be interested in constricting its own flexibility concerning reservoir water.

It is not over however. The Senate has not yet taken up the House bill. Legislative redemption is possible. Congressional oversight by way of eliminating funding for projects or by way of de-authorizing a project is a method for proper legislative management of a federal agency. The risk to upper basin Missouri River states and Indian tribes is that once water is regulated as surplus water, and once it is consumed by end-users, it becomes that much harder to later reinstate the original legal as well as declared beneficial uses of the water. A Prussian general when once asked to notice the beauty of a river nearby, turned and replied ‘an unimportant obstacle.’

David Ganje of Ganje Law Offices practices law in the area of natural resources, environmental and commercial law.

In SD you cannot mine water

Posted on: July 24th, 2017
by David Ganje

Gold is a nonrenewable resource. And under SD law, gold can be mined until it is gone.  Water – if it is mismanaged – is also a nonrenewable resource.  Whether as surface water or groundwater, water cannot be ‘mined’ under SD law.

Groundwater supplies about 54% of freshwater water use in the state.  Groundwater is subsurface water that saturates pores or cracks in soils and rocks.  It is replenished by precipitation. It is unevenly distributed in both quantity and quality.  Natural replenishment is subject to interruption by man’s intervention. Aquifers are water bearing formations (pools) of groundwater. Aquifers can be drained to the point of depletion.  This is not a speculative statement.  According to a 2016 study done by the Texas Water Development Board groundwater levels in all major and minor Texas aquifers have declined from predevelopment levels in response to development of groundwater resources for agricultural, municipal, and industrial uses.  The Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District acknowledged in February of 2017 it is managing a depleted groundwater system. And, while not widely known, a 2013 report by the US Geological Survey indicates that the level of SD aquifers is down.

Nothing shames man’s intelligence more than when human design is used to abuse nature.  This is the very reason behind the concept of water as a public asset.  The  SD Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the state Water Management Board are the agencies with authority to manage the state’s public waters.  Their job is to not let water users of the present borrow from the future; that is, the available sources of water in the state are managed in order prevent depletion.  SD law states, “No application to [use] groundwater may be approved if . . . it is probable that the quantity of water withdrawn annually . . .  will exceed the quantity of the average estimated annual recharge of water to the groundwater source.”  This is the anti-mining of water provision found in the law.  It has been suggested that SD is unique regarding this provision.  That is not correct. Other states have similar law.  Idaho has been enforcing its anti-mining provision successfully in court since the early 1970s. State management of state public waters held in trust for the people is the most important environmental issue SD handles.  I can state that DENR is the most open and accessible of any other state’s environmental agency with which I have dealt.

It is up to the state to determine if a body of water has been ‘exhausted’ and should not be accessible to new water permits for industrial or irrigation purposes.  This makes DENR and the Water Management Board both judge and jury on some important questions. When an aquifer is used to its full capacity such that any further use would clearly deplete the aquifers ability to recharge its deficit, it is said in the world of water law that the aquifer is ‘fully appropriated.’  Any new applications for use of the water then put DENR and the state Water Management Board in the role as judge and jury so to speak.

SD has determined that two aquifers are currently fully appropriated.  There is a third aquifer that is close to receiving this designation.  When a body of water is fully appropriated, no further permits for use of the water are approved.  If future water levels and quantities make it available at a later date, it is possible the state would later grant such use.

Monitoring water levels is an ongoing duty of DENR. When temporary overuse is determined DENR has authority to issue shut-off orders.  A shut-off order prevents a license/permit holder from accessing such water even though a previous permit was granted.  At present there are two shutoff orders in place.  A shutoff order is often a temporary directive, and if water levels recover to acceptable levels the shutoff order is withdrawn.

Agencies and boards are not however infallible.  And in the area of water rights this can present a revealing story.  In 2012 the state Water Management Board granted an industrial water permit for the use of 720,000 gallons of water per day for a commercial dairy operation.  Local neighbors challenged this decision by the Board in state Circuit Court.  The Circuit Court in its decision determined that existing well data based on historical use of three decades from nearby test wells was not a sufficient showing of what an additional draw of 720,000 gallons of water a day would do to the affected aquifer.  The Circuit Court ruled there had not been an adequate showing of how the aquifer would recharge itself absent some good evidence of the impact of the requested new use on the aquifer.  The permit applicant in that case offered no water study (hydrology study) reviewing the applicant’s water use impact on the aquifer, and yet the Board approved the permit.  The Circuit Court reversed the Water Management Board’s decision.

I suggest that water use permit applicants who will be using large quantities of water from a water body be required by rule to provide the state with recharge studies as a part of the application process.  The state’s established policy forbidding the mining of the public’s water would be better served.  Such a rule is not currently in place in any SD tribal water code or in the state’s water code or rules.

David Ganje of Ganje Law Offices practices in the area of natural resources, environmental and commercial law.

You Get The Water With The Land – Sort Of

Posted on: October 28th, 2016
by David Ganje

Gaze over your shoreline property knowing that you can access the waters directly in front of you. Unfortunately, under New York law, depending on the shape of the shoreline and how lot boundaries are drawn, this may not be the case. New York courts use different principles and their own discretion in determining the reach of landowners’ riparian rights.

In Muraca v. Meyerowitz, 13 Misc. 3d 348, 350 (Sup. Ct. 2006), three adjacent riparian landowners disputed each others riparian water rights boundaries primarily because one of the party’s private boat occupied a large portion of surface waters near the shore.

Under New York law, riparian rights only arise from the ownership of land abutting or surrounding a body of water, such as a lake or a pond as long as there is contact between water and the land.  In Muraca, the Court recognized that riparian landowner rights extend out to the navigable portion of the water body, but go no further. A riparian owner has the right to access water and the related right to protect the water from illegal drawing of the water as well as the right to build out to the water by way of a dock, slip or pier.

When a controversy concerning riparian rights arises, the resolution sought is access to water from shoreline properties. How to determine the rights of access between riparian landowners is complex.

In New York there are no mechanical rules used to draw the lateral boundaries between riparian landowners. Rather, courts strive to give an equitable allocation of the waterfront area, with the right of access depending on the frontage available to the landowner based on the lateral boundaries of their properties.
The Muraca court explains that two principal formulas have been derived for establishing lateral boundaries in the context of landowner’s riparian rights.
First, the “perpendicular rule” extends the lateral onshore boundaries out to the navigable body of water by lines that are perpendicular to the shoreline. This principle is equitable when there are only minor shoreline irregularities (i.e. a straight onshore boundary).

Second, the “proportional method” attempts to draw a path between onshore boundaries that are proportionate to the amount of frontage the landowners enjoys. When choosing a method or modifying a rule, a court will consider a landowner’s right to direct access to navigable waters along with their neighbor’s right of direct access.

So it is not just one’s right of access to navigable waters that matter when resolving such controversies, but rather what in fact matters are one’s riparian rights in relation to one’s neighbors.

There are limits attached to these general principals. A riparian owner must remember that he is always subject to the restrictions to which he agreed when he purchased the property. Outside of these contractual or deed restrictions, riparian landowners cannot extend their “upland boundaries”, or the boundary above the mean high tide line, to form the lateral boundaries of the land under the water. This limit however is not all encompassing. New York courts have recognized that a riparian owner’s right to the natural flow of water along its land is properly classified as real property, equally with the land. A party could nevertheless acquire an interest in the water flow separate and distinct from the land under the water.

In Muraca the Court found the proportionate rule inapplicable and modified the perpendicular rule because strictly applying the perpendicular rule would have unfairly reduced the defendants’ right to access their outshore surface waters.

Ironically, even though the boat owner was given more riparian rights to access the outshore waters in front of his property than the complaining plaintiff requested, the Court found the party’s ability to dock his 28 foot boat to be of little consequence. The riparian rights boundaries only have to be sufficient enough to accommodate reasonably sized watercraft.

The implications of a court determining the riparian boundary lines based on general principles of equity is memorable.
First, it suggests that a court can alter your deed if you eventually find yourself in litigation over the riparian rights of yourself and other riparian landowners.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, under New York law, when riparian real property increased by “accretion”, or the gradual addition of property along a shoreline, then new formed land belongs to the upland landowner. However, if the riparian boundary lines are altered as the court did in Muraca, then the new lands normally entitled to riparian landowner will go to their neighbor.

David Ganje practices law in the area of natural resources, environmental and commercial law. 

Free Land – South Dakota Style

Posted on: October 22nd, 2016
by David Ganje

Water and land do not mix well in South Dakota. In the last few days South Dakota gave up on its disputed claim to a 500 acre three-mile-long island known as Goat Island located in the Missouri River.  The state conceded jurisdiction over the claimed island giving control to the federal government. The lack of media coverage analyzing the pros and cons of this recent withdrawal of South Dakota’s disputed Goat Island land claim is disappointing. The state had argued that Goat Island was on the South Dakota side of the river when Lewis and Clark mapped the river in 1804. This is a public matter involving a state claim to land on the Missouri River. What were the reasons for the settlement of the claim? How is it good for South Dakota? The media did not ask. The government press releases did not say. Now the island is in the hands of the feds. The hand of government did this deal, but we know not the reasons for the decision.

Property boundaries matter when your land is next to a river or a body of water.  If the river deposits land onto your riverfront by “accretion”, then who owns it?   Accretion is the gradual increase to land, notably riparian land, stemming from the movement of water.  A meandering river has no master.  Certainly man-made law has not corralled a meandering river with anything close to perfection, or to some landowners, with any degree of satisfaction. Questions come up when riverfront boundaries naturally shift due to erosion or accretion.

South Dakota has enacted several laws regarding accretion rights.  The first important section states that when land forms from natural causes gradually over time next to a stream or river such land belongs to the owner of the bank, and it does not matter whether the water is navigable or not.  The second concerns avulsion, or the violent or sudden carrying away of land by a river or stream to another part of the river or opposite bank. Under the statute the owner of the original land may reclaim the land within one year of the new owner taking possession.  And the US Supreme Court has gotten into the act by ruling in the 1970s that the doctrine of accretion applies to changes in the river caused by both artificial as well as natural causes.

One lesson to learn from old man river is:  Don’t use fuzzy boundaries for the legal description in your deeds and contracts.  That is, do not let your lawyer describe the boundaries of your land by reference to a body of water. 

It must be wonderful to be the state.  South Dakota can give land away, and it can receive control of newly formed lakes for free. In a recent law case involving a dispute over the ownership of three newly-formed lakes in the state, the state Supreme Court ruled that effective ownership of these three newly formed lakes, all on privately owned land, should be held in the name of the state.  The Parks case ruling stated the lakebeds would continue to be owned by the private landowners but the lakes and water of the lakes are to be controlled by the state for the benefit of the people of the state.  The result:  more than two thousand surface acres of land, now in the form of lakes, would be controlled and supervised by the state and not the landowners.  Surprisingly, no mention of compensation to the landowners was made for this taking. The state taketh and the state giveth away. It is wonderful to be the state.

David Ganje practices law in the area of natural resources, environmental and commercial law.

Free Land — If You Can Keep It

Posted on: October 12th, 2016
by David Ganje

Free Land – If You Can Keep It

It seems everyone is looking for newfound money whether in the form of land or the lottery. Let us look at the miracle of “new land” obtained by accretion along a riverbank as a phenomena of newfound money. Property boundaries matter when your land is next to a river. If the river deposits land onto your riverfront by “accretion”, then who owns it? Accretion is the gradual increase to land, notably riparian land, stemming from the movement of water. A meandering river has no master. Certainly man-made law has not corralled a meandering river with anything close to perfection, or to some landowners, with any degree of satisfaction. Questions come up when riverfront boundaries naturally shift due to erosion or accretion.

In Norby v. Estate of Kuykendall, 2015 ND 232, 869 N.W.2d 405, Norby owned land adjacent to the Kuykendalls along the North Dakota-Montana border. Norby’s land was on the eastern Montana side and Kuykendal was on the western North Dakota side, with the Yellowstone River separating the properties. But, importantly, neither party’s deed history described the legal boundaries by reference to the Yellowstone River. Gradually the Yellowstone River moved eastward, eroding land from its eastern bank and accreting it on to the western bank. This “new land” on the North Dakota side made up 96 acres.

Norby brought suit to eject the Kuykendalls from the disputed property and to quiet title on the theory that the disputed land were his “riparian accretions.”

Typically riparian and ownership rights of a riverbank shift as the river moves without considering other fixed boundaries. Nevertheless, since Norby’s deed never mentioned the Yellowstone River as the property line, his argument sank.

Perhaps an even more relevant case is the older case of Perry v. Erling, 132 N.W.2d 889 (N.D. 1965). Mrs. Perry argued that she was entitled to “new land” formed by accretion. She owned land directly east of the Big Muddy originally as a non-riparian owner (i.e. landlocked). Since the original land survey in 1872, the river had shifted eastward eroding other intervening riparian lots and eventually turning Mrs. Perry’s lot into riparian land. Over time the river built up “new land” by accretion over the intervening lots. The Court rejected Mrs. Perry’s arguments by making clear that non-riparian owners, such as Mrs. Perry, are only entitled to the land that falls within their original property lines when their property boundaries were not set with reference to a body of water. The original riparian lot owners however would be entitled to the accreted lands.

These cases raise several important points for landowners who hold title to land near bodies of water. For instance, if your land now has additional riverbank or land because of how the river shifted over time, you may still not have ownership over any of the “new land” if your property description was not acquired with legal reference to a river. Laws that normally give rights to riverbank landowners will not help you in this case. However, if your original property boundary was set by descriptive reference to a river, then you may be able to claim the newly formed land as your own. The law of man does not direct the flow of a river.  So be specific in your land deed descriptions or be at the mercy of the river. A good scrivener (lawyer) is worth a thousand words.

Article Also Available at Bismark Tribute

David Ganje practices law in the area of natural resources, environmental and commercial law.