## Facts

- Beaunit Corporation operated a textile manufacturing plant on the Coosa River between Logan Martin Dam (upstream) and Lay Dam (downstream), both operated by Alabama Power Company.
- Congress authorized a federally supervised, multi-purpose development program for the Alabama–Coosa River system, including dam construction and operation under Federal Power Commission licensing and federal flood-control/navigation rules.
- Alabama Power obtained a federal license to build and operate Logan Martin Dam as a “peaking plant,” releasing water intermittently to meet peak electrical demand.
- After peaking operations began, river flow at Beaunit’s discharge point fluctuated, with periods of reduced or interrupted flow, though monthly and annual flow quantities were substantially similar to prior conditions.
- Beaunit lawfully discharged treated industrial effluent under state standards and permits; previously, continuous river flow diluted and dispersed the discharge to remain within state water-quality standards.
- Under intermittent low-flow conditions, Beaunit could not continuously discharge without risking violations of state water-quality standards.
- Beaunit built additional waste-treatment and storage facilities (including lagoons), reportedly costing about $650,000, to avoid violations.
- Beaunit sued Alabama Power seeking damages, alleging the altered flow interfered with Beaunit’s riparian rights to a reasonably continuous flow suitable for its operations.
- The case was tried to the court on essentially undisputed facts, resulting in findings and conclusions under Rule 52.

## Issues

1. Whether a downstream riparian owner may recover damages under Alabama riparian law for an upstream dam’s alteration of the timing and rate of river flow (without material reduction in aggregate quantity) when the dam operates under a valid federal license within a congressionally authorized river-development program.
2. Whether costs incurred to add pollution-control facilities due to intermittent flows constitute a compensable injury to riparian rights or a noncompensable consequence of lawful river regulation and the discharger’s own compliance obligations.

## Decision

- Judgment was entered for Alabama Power Company; Beaunit took nothing.
- The court held that Alabama Power’s federally licensed peaking operations did not unlawfully interfere with Beaunit’s riparian rights.
- The court denied recovery of Beaunit’s expenditures for additional waste-treatment and storage facilities.

## Legal Principles

- Under Alabama law, riparian rights are qualified and correlative; a riparian owner is entitled to reasonable use and reasonable flow, not a fixed, historically constant flow regime.
- Altering flow timing and rate, without materially diminishing the total quantity of water available over time, is not necessarily an actionable invasion of downstream riparian rights.
- Where river regulation is undertaken pursuant to a congressionally authorized, federally licensed, multi-purpose development program, a private riparian owner cannot use state-law riparian claims to require operations inconsistent with the federal license’s authorized purposes and conditions.
- Increased costs of industrial waste handling needed to comply with applicable water-quality requirements were treated as the discharger’s responsibility, not damages attributable to a lawful, federally authorized change in river operations.

## Conclusion

The court rejected a downstream manufacturer’s attempt to shift pollution-control compliance costs to an upstream utility operating a federally licensed peaking dam, holding that qualified riparian rights did not guarantee continuous historic flow conditions and that lawful federally authorized flow regulation was not a compensable interference under the circumstances.


Beaunit Corp. v. Ala. Power Co., 370 F. Supp. 1044 (N.D. Ala. 1973)