Who owns Virginia’s waterways and riverbeds?
What do you make of this sentence from the office of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli: “The legal presumption is that unless proved otherwise, waterways and bottomlands are public lands.” Most people understand that riverbanks can be privately owned and people can be prohibited from trespassing, but the rivers and waterways themselves in Virginia are property […]
What do you make of this sentence from the office of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli: “The legal presumption is that unless proved otherwise, waterways and bottomlands are public lands.”
Most people understand that riverbanks can be privately owned and people can be prohibited from trespassing, but the rivers and waterways themselves in Virginia are property of the Commonwealth and we are all free to roam as we please (within reason, of course). Right?
Maybe not. See this from Andy Thompson’s column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Who owns a river? Who owns its banks and its bed? Who owns the right to float the water that flows over that bed and by those banks? Who owns the fish, or the right to fish the fish that swim in that water, by those banks and over that bed?
If that sounds like the beginning of a Dr. Seuss book, that’s good. You should be in the proper frame of mind to dive into the case of the two Jackson River anglers now being sued in Alleghany County Court for civil trespass by riverfront property owners in a development called The River’s Edge.
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