U.S. Sup. Ct.
10-218
Petitioner PPL Montana, LLC (PPL), owns and operates hydroelectric facilities in Montana. Ten of its facilities are located on riverbeds underlying segments of the Missouri, Madison, and Clark Fork Rivers. Five hydroelectric dams on the Upper Missouri River are along the Great Falls reach, including on the three tallest waterfalls; and PPL’s two other dams on that river are in canyons on the Stubbs Ferry stretch. These, together with two dams located in steep canyons on the Madison River, are called the Missouri-Madison project. The Thompson Falls project is a facility on the Clark Fork River. Both projects are licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. PPL’s facilities have existed for many decades, some for over a century. Until recently, Montana, though aware of the projects’ existence, sought no rent for use of the riverbeds. Instead, the understanding of PPL and the United States is that PPL has paid rents to the United States. In 2003, parents of Montana schoolchildren filed a federal suit, claiming that PPL’s facilities were on riverbeds that were state owned and part of Montana’s school trust lands. The State joined the suit and, for the first time, sought rents from PPL for its use of the riverbeds. That case was dismissed, and PPL and other power companies filed a state-court suit, claiming that Montana was barred from seeking compensation for PPL’s riverbed use. Montana counterclaimed, contending that under the equal-footing doctrine it owns the riverbeds and can charge rent for their use. The trial court granted Montana summary judgment as to navigability for purposes of determining riverbed title and ordered PPL to pay Montana $41 million in rent for riverbed use between 2000 and 2007. The Montana Supreme Court affirmed. Adopting a liberal construction of the navigability test, it discounted this Court’s approach of considering the navigability of particular river segments for purposes of determining whether a State acquired title to the riverbeds underlying those segments at the time of statehood. Instead, the Montana court declared the river stretches in question to be short interruptions of navigability that were insufficient as a matter of law to find nonnavigability, since traffic had circumvented those stretches by portage. Based on evidence of present-day, recreational use of the Madison River, the court found that river navigable as a matter of law at the time of statehood.
