LD 816
pg. 1
LD 816 Title Page An Act To Prohibit Changing the Flow of Water on Another's Land LD 816 Title Page
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LR 1192
Item 1

 
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Maine as follows:

 
Sec. 1. 17 MRSA §2802, as corrected by RR 2003, c. 2, §24, is
amended to read:

 
§2802. Miscellaneous nuisances

 
The erection, continuance or use of any building or place for
the exercise of a trade, employment or manufacture that, by
noxious exhalations, offensive smells or other annoyances,
becomes injurious and dangerous to the health, comfort or
property of individuals or of the public; causing or permitting
abandoned wells or tin mining shafts to remain unfilled or
uncovered to the injury or prejudice of others; causing or
suffering any offal, filth or noisome substance to collect or to
remain in any place to the prejudice of others; obstructing or
impeding, without legal authority, the passage of any navigable
river, harbor or collection of water; corrupting or rendering
unwholesome or impure the water of a river, stream, pond or
aquifer; imprudent operation of a watercraft as defined in Title
12, section 13068, subsection 8; unlawfully diverting, draining
or reversing the direction of the water of a river, stream, pond
or aquifer from its natural course or state to the injury or
prejudice of others; and the obstructing or encumbering by
fences, buildings or otherwise of highways, private ways,
streets, alleys, commons, common landing places or burying
grounds are nuisances within the limitations and exceptions
mentioned. Any places where one or more old, discarded, worn-out
or junked motor vehicles as defined in Title 29-A, section 101,
subsection 42, or parts thereof, are gathered together, kept,
deposited or allowed to accumulate, in such manner or in such
location or situation either within or without the limits of any
highway, as to be unsightly, detracting from the natural scenery
or injurious to the comfort and happiness of individuals and the
public, and injurious to property rights, are public nuisances.

 
SUMMARY

 
This bill classifies as a nuisance the act of draining or
reversing the direction of the water of a river, stream, pond or
aquifer from its natural course or state to the injury or
prejudice of others. Similar to the nuisance of unlawfully
diverting water from its natural course, a person who is
aggrieved by the unlawful draining or changing of the direction
of water may maintain a civil action against the person causing
the nuisance.


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