| Loudoun County Sanitation Authority, to plan for and provide a safe and adequate municipal
water supply to Northern Virginia.
Virginia seeks to enjoin the State of Maryland from requiring that Virginia obtain
approval from Maryland as a condition of (1) withdrawing water from the River and (2) building
improvements in the River appurtenant to the Virginia shoreline. Virginia's rights in this regard
are protected not only by federal common law, but by Article VII of the Mt. Vernon Compact of
1785 and by Clause IV of the Black-Jenkins Award of 1877.
Virginia now moves for partial summary judgment on Maryland's claim that Virginia's
compact rights are inapplicable above the tidal reach of the Potomac River, where the recent
controversy has arisen. Virginia asks the Master to find that the rights guaranteed by Article VII
of the Compact of 1785 and by Clause IV of the Black-Jenkins Award of 1877, and reserved in
Article VII of the Potomac River Compact of 1958, apply to the River along the entire boundary
between the States, including above the tidal reach.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
In 1785, the boundary between Maryland and Virginia along the Potomac River was 383
miles long, and more than two-thirds of that boundary lay above the furthest upstream extent of
the tidal reach. At that time, the precise location of the boundary line between the States along
the Potomac River remained unsettled, with Virginians claiming to the Maryland shore and
Marylanders claiming to the Virginia shore. Thus, when commissioners from the two States
convened at Mt. Vernon and negotiated the Compact of 1785, the ownership and use of the River
was still in dispute.
Without resolving the boundary dispute, Article VII of the Compact protected the rights
of both States by providing that the "citizens of each State, respectively, shall have full property
|
