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Navigable waterways are the property of the United States of America.
Non-navigable waterways are the property of those whose land they pass. The water flowing therein is the property of all through whose land the water passes.
You only own that water which you can obtain and use without damming the stream.
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Yep. I have a non-navigable but sizable creek passing through my property— I own both sides. And yes, I can take whatever water I want as long as I don’t dam it up. I wouldn’t want to do that, anyway, because it would hurt my downstream neighbors, and they are nice folks.
That is the federal law and Real Estate law. Every navigable river has a legal easement for the public in every title deed I have ever seen. The problem became two fold under Obama. First the river users wanted more, they wanted to be able to land their boats and camp on private property, they wanted oh maybe 100' inland to camp and have fires and be on the river. That is not ever going to fly, stay in the water, legal, land to poop or pee or lunch, no!
Then Obama and his EPA really got into it and declared all water, all of it, was navigable, so the feds had a right to regulate. Thats when I stated freaking out. I have ponds, and a seasonal creek on my property. The water is collected from my mountainous land into catch basins, ponds, to be used to irrigate our garden and orchard. Obama and his control freaks in the EPA decided all the water is now "navigable" and theirs to control.
Can you imagine a little farmer like us would have DC bureaucrats coming onto our property and telling us our ponds are not engineered properly and they had to go, or maybe worse, you must stock your ponds and open them up to the public?