Supreme Court should overturn case on river rent, US solicitor general says

The U.S. Justice Department, siding with PPL Montana in the company’s legal battle over whether it must pay rent to Montana on its hydroelectric dams, says the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a $41 million state court ruling that went against the company. In legal arguments filed with the nation’s high court last week, the U.S. solicitor general said the Montana Supreme Court erred in 2010 when it declared that the rivers at PPL Montana’s dams are “navigable” and therefore the riverbeds are owned by the state. The Montana courts didn’t properly analyze the sections of river in question, and should be required to re-examine whether those specific sections are navigable, possibly at a trial, said U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. If a river section is found to be navigable when Montana became a state in 1889, then the state owns the riverbed. Verrilli also suggested that if the proper analysis occurred, the courts might find that sections of rivers underneath 10 Montana dams owned by PPL are not navigable, and therefore the state doesn’t own the riverbed and can’t charge for its use. “When a discrete and substantial segment is not navigable at statehood, the state does not take title to that segment, whether or not the segment could be portaged,” he wrote...more