Quote:
Originally Posted by pmrid
I have been of the understanding that in Qld at least, the claim of ownership to water arises when it hits the ground - not while it is in the air. The ownership of water on the ground and in streams is then made subject to various exemptions for rural dams and tanks and the like. I haven't looked at this act for a long time so I concede things may have changed. But I would have thought it impossible for any giovernment to claim owvership of something that is not fixed on the earth and therefore arguably subject to the reservations under the opriginal crown grants - like mnerals etc.
To claim ownership of rain that is falling (which I would think would include rain landing on your roof and going straight into your tank) would be legally unsustainable. I can see some meaty challenges to this sort of nonsense.
If it were possible to claim ownership of rain still in the sky, then it would necessarily include uncondensed rain (i.e. water molecules not yet formed into droplets as well as the clouds they form - whether they ever fell as rain or not. Now, how could one State claim ownership to something that usually arises in the deep ocean, travels by wind over international waters followed by one or more states and then, finally lands in one of them. On that thesis, and notwithstanding that it arises in international space, it would follow that it could then be claimed by each and every state over which it passed before it fell - and whether it fell as rain or not. The level of nonsense this suggests in monumental.
Peter
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No doubt the airspace over Australia is also vested in Governments. So, I don't think such a claim would hold water
