While I’m the first to admit I believe if you own something the government nor anyone else should be allowed to tell you how you should control your property. But when historical precedents dictate something you claim to own is in fact unownable, your plenary control is invalid. This is what we see so often across our state. 

 

Whether it be landowners or corporations, interest groups or bureaucrats, many of square mile of historically accessible water bodies become inaccessible to the public each year.  Admittedly watercourses do change over time as their natural progression meanders the flow downward in elevation to reach the gulf, but this isn’t typically the cause of the conflict we are beginning to see so regularly. It would be understandable if a waterbody meandered from bordering a property to running through it that a landowner may feel they own that waterbody, but even then that isn’t what legal precedents have upheld. Navigable bodies, while fluid in boundary, have traditionally been upheld as navigable and not private regardless of the location of their waterbed. Sure you can maintain your ownership of the land based on historical boundary surveys, and if you want to fight for the mineral rights if a state owned water body migrates onto your land you stand a chance in court (albeit a small one), but as popularized in viral videos from on the water incidents, “You don’t own the water bro!”  

 

We can all remember the recent Waters of the US act and it’s numerous contentious iterations. While bridled back, it is still a far-reaching piece of legislation that dictates governmental ownership of navigable water bodies, in some instances even interpretable as a private pond in your yard, and subject to governmental oversight and regulation. One has to ask if that precedent has been upheld, how then can someone restrict the navigability of that water by putting up gates, fences, pile walls, and poles in channels?  Further, when private interests improve canals and waterways to the point the watercourse takes the improved pathway, allowing the traditional “public and navigable” path to become silted in and impassible, where is the responsibility?

 

Yet Louisiana continues to allow such restrictions on navigable water bodies. According to the Louisiana Sportsman’s Coalition, the latest fell under the auspices of a lack of public comment, most likely dictated by the stay at home order issued by the government, yet was still “allowed” to proceed, despite not having a US Army Corps of Engineers permit to close a navigable channel. It makes you wonder just how far government has come from its roots as being “of, by, and for the people” in this land. With so much of the regulatory load being shifted to pseudo-governmental institutions in lieu of elected governing bodies, bureaucracy within the water access battle has been allowed to run rampant. 

 

Not just limited to the battle of navigability facing so many in south Louisiana, but also the controls of water access on state owned lakes. Many state-owned lakes have minimal public access and their regulation authority outside of statutory criminal law has often been relegated to local pseudo-governmental bodies such as appointed boards and commissions. These boards are most often comprised of appointed bureaucrats instead of elected officials. This in essence removes the first amendment right to petition the government on these issues, effectively removing the ability to hold government accountable by shifting governmental tasks to non-governmental entities. With many agreements for management of state-owned water bodies codified by statutes as giving these boards “plenary” control, this is a clear way of muddying the water when it comes to authority and regulatory control.  With the recent loss of Catahoula Lake from the public domain, it is more clear now than ever that sportsman’s rights are being eroded. 

 

Another such example is the recent drastic increase of “no-wake” and “idle only” mandates on many lakes across the state. In nearly all cases these orders did not come from a governmental body and were not enacted at the behest of LDWF, the accepted universal law enforcement authority on state water bodies. Rather, many of these orders were issued by boards full of bureaucrats who took an appointment because they may have property interest on the waterbody. Much of this was due to inappropriate building elevations to begin with, yet the accessibility of the state resource is limited because some folks saved some money to build a pier lower. Don’t get me wrong, if there’s an inhabited dwelling that is being inundated there isn’t a decent person I know that’d throw a wake into a home, but mandating idle only because a few pier planks are going to get popped off - bureaucratic overreach. 

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