| in the shores of Potowmack River adjoining their lands, with all emoluments and advantages
thereunto belonging, and the privilege of making and carrying out wharves and other
improvements, so as not to obstruct or injure the navigation of the river; but the right of fishing
in the river shall be common to and equally enjoyed by the citizens of both States . . . ." These
words are simple and straightforward and can not be read to apply to anything other than the
entire River. Other portions of the Compact also applied to the entire River. Had the drafters of
the Compact intended to limit the rights secured by Article VII of the Compact to the tidewater
portion of the River, they would have said so.
The plain and obvious meaning of the words was confirmed in 1877 when the boundary
controversy over the Potomac River was finally settled by binding arbitration. The resulting
Black-Jenkins Award, approved by Maryland, Virginia, and Congress, established the boundary
line at the low-water mark on the Virginia shore of the Potomac River, running from the
Virginia-West Virginia border to the mouth of the River in the Chesapeake Bay. The arbitrators
made clear, both in their award and in their accompanying opinion, that Virginia had the right to
use the River and to extend improvements into the River from the Virginia shoreline beyond the
low-water mark. Clause Four of the Award specifically provided that "Virginia is entitled not
only to full dominion over the soil to low-water mark on the south shore of the Potomac, but has
a right to such use of the river beyond the line of the low-water mark as may be necessary to the
full enjoyment of her riparian ownership, without impeding the navigation or otherwise
interfering with the proper use of it by Maryland, agreeably to the compact of seventeen hundred
and eighty-five." (Emphasis added). Nothing in the Award limited the rights recognized in
Clause Four to the tidal portion of the River. Moreover, Maryland conceded in the arbitration
that Virginia's Potomac River access rights applied along the entire boundary.
3
|
