Watercourse

This term Is applied to the flow or movement of the water in rivers, creeks, and other streams. Surface water flowing from one tract to another having a fixed and determinate course, so as to uniformly discharge it upon the servient tract at a fixed and definite point, the course thus uniformly followed by the water in its flow is a watercourse. 177 111. 140.

The natural flow of water in streams, considered as a subject of a legal interest or right vested in owners of land affected. A watercourse is a right which a man may have to the benefit or flow of a river or stream. This right includes that of having the course of the stream kept free from any interruption or disturbance to the prejudice of the proprietor, by the acts of persons without his own territory, — whether owing to a diversion of the water, or to its obstruction, or pollution by offensive commixture. 1 Steph. Com. 659, 693. A watercourse is a species of incorporeal hereditament; being a right which one has to the benefit of the flow of a river or stream, such right commonly referring to himself on both sides, or to himself on one side and to his neighbor on the other, In which latter case (unless the stream be navigable; for then the bed of it — so far, at least, as the tide of the sea flows — presumably belongs to the crown) the proprietor of each bank is considered as prima facie the proprietor also of half the land covered by the stream, i.e. usque medium j Uum aqixce. Wharton. A spring on the defendant's land, sixteen rods from the land of the plaintiff, supplied a small stream of water that ran to the plaintiff's land, the water as it came from the spring being sufficient to fill a half-inch pipe, and the flow being constant and nearly uniform, except in very dry times, when it failed to run. For seven rods the stream descended rapidly, in a well-defined course, to a piece of marshy ground, where it spread so that its flow was slight and not sufficient to break the turf, but was generally sufficient to form a continuous sluggish current along the surface, in a natural depression, to a watering-place within the plaintiff's line., It was held that this was a watercourse, within the meaning attached in law to that term. Gillett v. Johnson, 30 Conn. 180. To constitute a watercourse from one tract of land into another, there must be something more than a mere surface drainage over the entire face of the first tract on to the second, occasioned by unusual freshets or other extraordinary causes. Luther v. Winnisimmet Co., 9 Cush 171. If the face of the country is such as necessarily to collect in one body so large a quantity of water, after heavy rains and the melting of large bodies of snow, as to require an outlet, and if such water is regularly discharged through a well-defined channel which the force of the water has made for itself, and which is the accustomed channel through which it flows, and has flowed from time immemorial, such channel is an ancient natural watercourse. Earl v. De Hart, 12 N. J. Eq. 280. A watercourse is a stream of water, usually flowing in a certain direction, in a regular channel, with bed and banks. But the water need not flow continually: the channel may be sometimes dry. Moreover, the term watercourse does not include occasional bodies of surface water descending from the hills at certain seasons, down the lio Uows and ravines, without any definite channel, during times of rains or the melting of snow and ice. Eulrich v. Eichter, 37 Wis. 226. The term watercourse does not apply to a line of discharge, whether natural or artificial, which is not the usual channel of flow. Fryer v. Warne, 29 Wis. 511.