Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 27, 1992 TAG: 9201280123
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DON'T GIVE AWAY PUBLIC WATERWAYS
YOU, the Virginia public, have long been owners (proud owners, you should be) of thousands of miles of non-tidal, non-navigable rivers and creeks in this state.To protect your rights of ownership, and avoid an unwarranted giveaway, the General Assembly ought to reject a measure sponsored by Roanoke Del. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum. It would subvert public ownership of streams on behalf of those possessing property that borders the waterways.
These creeks - or more specifically, the streambeds under the water - have long been open to everyone for fishing and fowling, as long as users don't step out on the banks.
Woodrum's bill would radically alter this public policy and legal principle. It would give owners of private property abutting the streams the right to post the streambeds - effectively prohibiting anyone from wading in the streams to fish.
To be sure, the bill's passage would not remove from the public domain Virginia's vast aqua network for inland fishing and refreshing recreation. Private-property owners - many avid fishermen themselves - generally have been good stewards of the streams. They have helped enhance and preserve this natural resource for public benefit.
Would they all rush selfishly to post "Keep out" signs? Probably not.
But the danger is that the Woodrum bill would give them that right. It would mean that a very small percentage of Virginia's population would gain control over an estimated 22,000 miles of public waterways, with legal authority to shut out the public if they so choose.
Supporters of the legislation suggest that private-property owners have no incentive to improve the quality of fishery in the public streams if they can't control the streambeds. Concerned by what they see as erosion of their rights, landowners say they certainly should be able to prevent parades of people from tramping through their property, invading their privacy - and, yes, fishing streams that they've stocked at their personal expense.
The case of a Craig County property owner is cited by Woodrum as one reason he introduced the bill. The landowner had stocked a section of Meadow Creek for development as a pay-for-fishing program - only to learn he could not keep people from wading in and fishing for free. Interlopers, he complains, were taking his fish.
But were they? Fish, it has been said, gotta swim (like birds gotta fly). They don't stay where you put them. Damming, for good reason, is strictly regulated. So who's to say the fish being taken from Meadow Creek were fish the Craig County landowner had put there or volunteers who'd visited from upcreek?
In any case, once his fish were released to swim in the public's water, they were no longer his fish.
Understand, there are many privately owned streams. Those are not at issue here. Understand, too, that property owners have a clear right to prevent those who use the public streams abutting their property from wading ashore, littering or otherwise damaging their land. They enjoy a similar right to prevent uninvited guests from cutting across their property to get to the streams.
They don't need Woodrum's legislation to protect these rights. And they shouldn't be allowed to appropriate land - the public streambeds - that does not belong to them any more than does the air and sky over their property.