15 Pa. Super. 89 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1900
Opinion by
Riparian proprietors are entitled, in the absence of grant, license or prescription limiting their rights, to have the stream which washes their lands flow as it is wont by nature, without material diminution or alteration. Each proprietor may, therefore, insist that the stream shall flow to his land in the usual quantity, at its natural place and height, and that it shall flow off his land to his neighbor below in its accustomed place and at its usual level: Gould on Waters, sec. 204. In the leading Pennsylvania case it was said: “ The natural streams of water existing by the bounty of Providence, for the benefit of the land through which they flow, are incidents annexed to the land itself: Tyler v. Wilkinson, 4 Mason, 397; Arnold v. Foot, 12 Wend. 330. They do not begin by consent of parties, nor by prescription, but ex jure naturse, and therefore they are not extinguished by unity ; nor can they be obstructed or diverted to the prejudice of adjacent proprietors: Sury v. Piggatt, Popham, 170; 3 Bulst. 339. It was said by Sir John Leach in Wright v. Howard, 1 Sim. & Stuart, 190, that, “ every proprietor who claims a right either to throw the water back above, or to diminish the quantity which is to descend below, must, in order to maintain his claims, either prove an actual grant or license from the proprietors affected by its operations, or must prove an uninterrupted enjoyment of twenty years: ” Wheatley v. Baugh, 25 Pa. 528. It results from an application of these familiar elementary principles to the facts found by the learned judge that the acts of the defendants in filling up the channel of the stream on their land, and barricading the same with logs, stones and dirt, whereby the water was turned back on the land of the plaintiff, constituted an actionable nuisance. And as the obstruction was manifestly intended to be permanent and continuing, and as there was not even a pretense of right thus to obstruct the stream, the upper riparian owner was not bound to await the slow process of successive actions of trespass, but might in the first instance appeal to a court of equity for relief. But, it is urged, he acquiesced;
The decree is reversed, the bill is reinstated and it is now ordered, adjudged and decreed that the defendants remove the obstructions upon their land to the natural flow of the water in the stream described in the bill, that they be enjoined and restrained from hereafter obstructing the water in said watercourse so as to prevent the same from flowing off the plaintiff’s land as it was wont to do prior to the placing of said obstruction, and that they pay the costs incurred in the court below and on. this appeal.