Abstract |
The compilation relates to a study assigned by the Oregon Legislature to the Advisory Committee to the State Land Board. It is a preliminary work designed to provide a legal base for defining problems and proposing solutions to conflicting governmental jurisdictions, opposing claims of riparian ownership, overlapping authority of agencies, limits of navigation involving state ownership of beds and banks of Oregon's waterways and questions bearing on offshore authority and powers. The beds of navigable waterways and their banks, to the mean high water line, were granted to Oregon by the federal government at the time of statehood (1859). However, rivers, in their meandering routes to the sea have oscillated tremendously. Old banks and beds were abandoned, new ones created. These changes have occurred through the processes of accretion, erosion and avulsion, and the type of change involved often determines ownership of the river bed. Limits of navigability as they existed in 1859 also are confusing. The problems of tidelands, offshore submerged and submersible lands, and estuarine management are equally complex. This study is thus primarily pointed toward re-evaluation, clarification and revision of the above legal problems. |