Meander lines

Since no one else has replied, I will take a shot at this.

First in the normal course of events I would say no. In adjudicated omitted lands cases the courts have been extremely liberal in favor of the upland owner taking to the relicted existent water line even though it may be substantially further out than the meander line.

That being said, in the absence of any other intervening evidence the meanders are sort of considered the best evidence of where the HWM probably was "at the time of the original survey", that is a snapshot in time of a changing boundary.

That is not to be confused with it "being" a boundary. It may and often is used after being restored to facilitate the projection of partition lines and apportionment of accretion or reliction. In those extremely rare cases where there was considered to be fraud and the situation fits into caselaw guidelines of being omitted land, then the meander may become a fixed boundary when it represents the only available evidence as to the location of the water at one previous point in time. In those last two situations it may be considered prima facia evidence as you describe, but other evidence such as shorelines, escarpments and so forth may be superior.

- jlw

I think that the meander line is an attempt to define, roughly, the arable land vs. what was considered less desirable land.

However, accretion will change the boundary line, and any "proof" should be fairly obvious.

I would not assume that the meander line does anything more than give a closing line along waters. To attempt to use it as primary evidence of a Mean High Water Mark exceeds the purpose of a meander line location.

A case of avulsion should be equally apparent, visually...

I don't believe that an upland owner has to "prove" anything in either case. Accretion changes boundaries, avulsion doesn't.

My 0.04' worth...

:good:

I am not a PLSS guy so excuse my ignorance but do the original notes not usually have calls of the distance to the shoreline from the meander points? I thought they did and those would possibly better reflect historic HWM?

Yes sirs. Absolutely correct. Now all I've got to do is convince the GIS guy in an assessors office that the river is the boundary of my clients land, NOT the calculated line derived from the bearings and distances of the meander line.

He wants my client to file a quit claim deed to the owners on the other side of the river for the ground "between the official meander line and the actual river" so he can correctly depict the boundary lines and calculate the area to tax.

Good grief. 🙁

Here's a thought, maybe I should advise my client to file a quit claim deed for the area between the river and the meander line to the GIS guy????? Hmmmmmm. I may be on to something 🙂

> We all know (hopefully) that meander lines (except in cases of fraud and gross error) are not property lines, and that any land that lies between the meander line as run, and the body of water belongs to the upland owner.
>
> Question: Do the bearings and distances of the meander line returned by the GLO surveyors constitute prima facia evidence of the location of the ordinary high water mark? In other words, if there is presently dry land between the courses run by the GLO surveyors and the current OWHM of the river, does the upland owner have to prove that the river has not moved by either accretion or avulsion?

Meander lines can also become property lines where the GLO surveyor meandered something other than the bank of the body of water. In many locations in CA, the GLO surveyors meandered the edge of swamplands rather than the banks of rivers. I'm just finishing up a survey of the Ordinary High Water Lines (OHWL) and the Low Water Lines (LWL) of a portion of the San Joaquin River.

Withing the Township that this stretch of river runs, the GLO meander notes sometimes call for "along the bank" or "along the river", and sometimes call for "along the edge of willow thicket". Sometimes the transitions from bank to edge of willows (or vice versa) is clear, and sometimes not.

The State later received title from the Fed govt per the AR Swampland Act to all the lands between the meander lines in the township, excepting those lands comprising the bed of the river (which became sovereign lands at the time of statehood under the Equal Footing Doctrine).

The State patented the lands between the meanders (excepting the bed of the river) as various Swamp & Overflowed (S&O) Lands parcels. S&O lands are considered to be uplands which are either swampy or regularly inundated such that they were not fit for cultivation without reclamation measures. With the Fed govt issuing the S&O patent to the State, came the implied recognition of the meander lines as lines segregating the S&O lands from the more arable uplands. Thus the meander lines themselves became property boundaries.

This type of situation is an exception to the rule that the meander lines are not actual boundaries but merely approximations of the true boundary at water's edge, but it is not rare. Some states assert sovereign ownership to the OHWL and some to the LWL with only an easement for public use to the OHWL (Public Trust Easement under Equal Footing and Public Trust Doctrines).

The returns of the GLO surveyor with respect to the meanders constitute evidence, but far from prima facie, as to the location of the river at the time of the survey. The boundaries associated with them remain ambulatory as long as they do not become fixed due to an avulsive event or due to predominate and proximate effect of man-made influences. When either of those occur, the boundaries become fixed at the last natural locations of the banks.

In your case where the river is in an entirely different location, you need to invistigate the reasons for that movement. Is it extreme for the river? Is there now dams, canals, or other diversions upstream which account or could account for this movement? Was there an avulsive event at some point in history that caused the channel to switch to a completely different channel? Over the course of a year, or a few years, does the river typically move a few inches, a few feet, or several dozen feet? If it is a matter of a title dispute with the State, you can be certain that they will investigate all of these questions and more.

If the best available evidence, modern and historic, indicates that the dry channel best represents the last natural location of the riverbed, that is where the state must assert their sovereignty. I say "must" because the state cannot alientate the public from their right to use sovereign lands by conveying that land to a private party (Illinois v Illinois Central Railroad, 1892, 146 US 387), and knowingly allowing a private party to engage in acts of ownership (agriculture, development, other forms of exclusive occupation) would loosely fall under that.

But even if the dry bed is the last natural location and constitutes a sovereign claim, a state can enter into a Boundary Line Agreement (providing the state has enabling legislation empowering one or more agencies to do this where a BLA would benefit the public) to redefine where the sovereign claim will be from that point forward.

CA has such a statute and it has been used hundreds of times (actually, it is the political body that is the State Lands Commission that has the authority, but it is the staff that is the Agency of the State Lands Commission that does all the work and makes the recommendations). In a case like yours, assuming that the current location of the river channel is either on your client's property or adjoins it, a BLA to move the state's sovereign interest (and associated Public Trust Easement) from the dry bed to the present bed would benefit both your client and the state. The public would presumably have no practical use for the dry bed for uses of navigation and fishing, but would benefit by having those rights over the present channel.

Whether it is the upland owner's responsibility to prove the nature of title of the dry bed may depend upon what the upland owner is wanting to do with the land. First, answer the questions about the natural or diverted state of the channel. If the answers are not readily apparent, you may need to have your client ask the state for a jurisdictional determination so that they can use their resources to research and investigate whether the dry bed is the last natural location. If it is, your client should inquire about the process for a BLA and whether the responsible agency is statutorily authorized to enter into one.

If it is clear by the historic evidence that the river has moved gradually by natural forces, then the sovereign claim has moved with it. But the fact that there is a discernible dry bed and the present bed in a separate location suggests to me that the entire flow changed due to an avulsive or man-caused event. If it has moved gradually, there should be evidence of intermediate riverbed locations between the dry bed and the present one which would tend to make the edges of the dry bed less distinct.

I don't know if these 2 attachments will work, but one is a Google Earth image of a portion of the San Joaquin River that demonstrates relatively gradual channel movement over perhaps several hundred years in the portion that remains uncultivated. It also shows a very significant and proximate man-made influence in the form of the Bifurcation Station. The Bifurcation is 2 dams, 1 across the river and the other at the head of a bypass channel. Between the 2, they control the amount of flow to each channel. Additionally, there are levees lining most of the river, canals in & out of the river, and a major dam about 50 miles upstream.

The 2nd attachment is the GLO plat of this township. The S curve shown in the Google image is in Sections 25 & 36. Note the swamp land indicated within the meander lines and that the river is indicated within that. Other evidence we've found indicates that the river within Sections 25 & 36 at the time of the GLO survey (1853/54) most likely flowed in an S shape similar to the present channel, and not in the flattened U shape indicated on the GLO plat. It is apparent that the GLO surveyors did not expend much effort investigating the actual path or configuration of the river in the areas that they meandered "the edge of willow thicket". In fairness to the GLO surveyors, their primary focus was to survey the usable lands and to segregate out the unusable, and since the river was within the unusable lands, its precise location may not have seemed particularly important at the time.

I posted my reply below before seeing this post.

The GIS guy is making legal conclusions as to title and ownership, is he not? A bit out of the perview of a GIS geek.

He wants my client to file a quit claim deed to the owners on the other side of the river for the ground "between the official meander line and the actual river" so he can correctly depict the boundary lines and calculate the area to tax.

WOW! Did that come out of the blue? Or is your client trying to sell or split up his land?

Assessor people can be uneducated, to the least.

I wrote a boundary line adjustment description which was all of the property west of the following described line. Perfectly sufficient but the Assessor tech called me and said I had to write a new description which is a closed figure; sorry I don't have to anything because the County Surveyor already approved my description.

I was just wondering if some action by the landowner brought up the "issue", or if the GIS department contacted the landowner without prompting. That would be way out of line.

All my client wants is to stop paying taxes on land south of the river that he clearly does not own. We are only talking about less than an acre of pasture land, on a fairly insignificant river.

Those guys are strict. Here they would take it out without a deed. A quit claim deed in that situation is a bad idea. No doubt you already know that.