General principles according to who ?
Benny, riparian water rights have their principles in Common Law.
"
Riparian water rights (or simply
riparian rights) is a system for allocating water among those who possess land along its path. It has its origins in English common law"
See: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights"]Riparian water rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
Did you read the Flyfishing article?
If so you'd have seen that:
"Back in the 1980's the members of the Test and Itchen Fishing Association as it was then (the word fishing was dropped recently because it lacked inclusivity) clubbed together and pledged £70,000 to fight a court case against the British Canoe Union (BCU) who were asserting the right of navigation on the River Itchen.
It was a mighty sum of money to put at risk for an association that numbered less than two hundred and as Jim Glasspool reminded me should the judgment have gone against the T&I all the money would have been lost.
But, as things turned out,
the BCU capitulated on the court steps, accepting there was no public right of navigation. Costs of £40,000 were awarded against the BCU and as an impoverished student I was pleased to get back £80 of the £100 I had pledged. And there the position has pretty well lain since then, excepting a similar fight on the River Derwent (funded in part by a £10,000 contribution by T&I members) a few years later, where the judgement was the same."
There may have been a passage of time from those case to now, but the interpretation of the Law remains the same.
Legal opinion is really not all that unclear Benny, all that is happening is that the Paddlers are employing the tactics of obfuscation and disingenuousness to cloud the issue.
Personally I will be truly happy to see this go to the Courts to make their deliverance.
---------- Post added at 13:25 ---------- Previous post was at 13:11 ----------
I think you can paddle within a granted stretch without permission of adjacent owners because there would be no infringement on adjacent riparian owners rights
If any of the adjacent owners refused to grant permission then how do the paddlers get from that stretch to the one that has been granted permission?
My example of our syndicate stretch being a case in point, let's say that the first 2 owners agree a VAA but the third one does not?
That would mean that the paddlers would have to alight and find a non-trespassing manner to get from one stretch to another . . . . . . .