For those that own property next to a body of water in Michigan, your ownership rights in that water may be determined by how that body of water was created.
Riparian rights ar
e special rights to make use of water in a waterway adjoining the owner’s property. This includes “rights to make natural and artificial use of the water in the watercourse; the right to construct and maintain a dock; and the right to use the entire surface of the watercourse for recreational purposes.”
In Michigan, riparian rights only attach to land that abuts or includes a natural watercourse. In other words, there are no riparian rights that attach to land that abuts an artificial body of water. This is true even if the artificial body of water was formed by damming a natural waterway.
The Michigan Court of Appeals recently stressed the lack of riparian rights in artificial waterways in Lake Adrian Developers, LLC v. City of Adrian, et al. In that case, the plaintiff claimed riparian rights to Lake Adrian in Adrian, Michigan. By claiming ownership in the lake, the plaintiff in that case hoped to receive a portion of the royalty payments that the city was getting from granting rights to oil and gas exploration in Lake Adrian. Both the trial court and the Michigan Court of Appeals disagreed with plaintiff’s assertion of ownership rights because Lake Adrian is an artificial waterway that was formed by damming a natural waterway, Wolf Creek. Because the plaintiff’s property abutted the artificial Lake Adrian and not the natural Wolf Creek, the plaintiff had no riparian rights.
