water course

A running stream of water; a natural stream fed from permanent or natural sources, including rivers, creeks, runs, and rivulets. There must be a stream, usually flowing in a particular direction, though it need not flow continuously. It may sometimes be dry. It must flow in a definite channel, having a bed or banks, and usually discharges itself into some other stream or body of water. It must be something more than a mere surface drainage over the entire face of the tract of land, occasioned by unusual freshets or other extraordinary causes. Duckworth v. Williams, 238 S.W.2d 234, 386 S.W.2d 234, 235.

A water course, in the legal meaning of the word, does not consist merely of the stream as it flows within the banks which form its channel in ordinary stages of water, but the stream still retains its character as a water course when, in times of ordinary high water, the stream extending beyond its own banks, is accustomed to flow down over the adjacent lowlands in a broader but still definable stream. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Hadley, 168 Okl. 588, 35 P.2d 463, 466.

Water flowing underground in a known and well defined channel is not "percolating water", but constitutes a "water course", and is governed by law applicable to "surface streams", rather than by law applicable to percolating waters. Bull v. Siegrist, 169 Or. 180, 126 P.2d 832, 834.

See also ancient water course.

@ natural water course

A natural stream flowing in a defined bed or channel; one formed by the natural flow of the water, as determined by the general superficies or conformation of the surrounding country, as distinguished from an "artificial" water course, formed by the work of man, such as a ditch or canal

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