Opinion Number

Dear Mr. Ramsey:

This responds to your request for a clarification of state, federal, and local law as pertains to a landowner's authority to place gates, fences, or other obstructions on parish-maintained flood control structures, to a landowner's authority to exclude the public from the use of those structures on his property, and also to a landowner's authority to graze livestock on those structures.

Property adjacent to a navigable stream has historically been subject to the levee servitude at Art. 665 of the Civil Code, if the property was riparian when severed from the public domain. Use…