## Facts

- Private landowners owned about 6,000 acres of farmland overlying an alluvial aquifer in Boone County, Missouri (the McBaine Bottom).
- The aquifer consisted of saturated porous materials above an impervious limestone layer, creating a large underground reservoir with a high water table supporting agricultural productivity.
- Landowners used groundwater for domestic needs, livestock, and agricultural purposes and anticipated future irrigation use.
- The City of Columbia sought a supplemental municipal water supply and planned to acquire land over the same basin and drill wells.
- The City proposed pumping about 11.5 million gallons per day and transporting the water away for municipal sale and distribution.
- Landowners alleged the basin’s recharge rate was about 10.5 million gallons per day and that the City’s plan would withdraw more than recharge, lower the water table, and substantially impair or destroy their water-dependent farm uses.
- Landowners sought declaratory and injunctive relief, asserting correlative rights in the percolating groundwater and denying the City’s right to export water for off-tract municipal use in a manner that would deplete the common supply.
- The City moved to dismiss, arguing no justiciable controversy and that, under an absolute-ownership rule for percolating water, it could pump without liability.
- The trial court dismissed the petition; the landowners appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the petition alleged a sufficiently immediate and real dispute to support declaratory relief concerning rights to percolating groundwater and the City’s proposed pumping and export.
2. Whether the petition stated a claim for injunctive relief by alleging that the City’s threatened withdrawal and off-tract export would unreasonably interfere with neighboring landowners’ rights in the common groundwater supply.
3. Whether Missouri law governing percolating groundwater follows absolute ownership or instead limits withdrawals under a reasonable-use/correlative-rights doctrine, particularly for off-tract municipal export.

## Decision

- The appellate court reversed the dismissal and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the petition pleaded a justiciable controversy: the City’s concrete plan and asserted legal entitlement created an immediate, adverse dispute over legal rights and threatened harm.
- The court rejected an absolute-ownership rule for percolating groundwater in this context and adopted a reasonable-use doctrine recognizing correlative rights among overlying owners.
- The court held the allegations—pumping in excess of recharge and exporting for off-tract municipal sale with foreseeable substantial depletion—were sufficient at the pleading stage to state a claim that the proposed use was unreasonable and potentially enjoinable.

## Legal Principles

- Declaratory relief is available when parties with adverse legal interests present a substantial dispute of sufficient immediacy and reality; concrete planning and a threatened invasion of claimed rights can satisfy justiciability at the pleading stage.
- Owners overlying a common source of percolating groundwater have correlative rights; each may withdraw for reasonable use subject to the like rights of others.
- Groundwater withdrawals are limited to reasonable use in relation to the beneficial enjoyment of the overlying land; withdrawals that unreasonably harm neighboring owners’ reasonable uses are not permitted.
- Off-tract export of groundwater for sale or distribution may be unreasonable when it substantially interferes with neighboring owners’ uses, especially where planned withdrawals exceed natural recharge and threaten material depletion.
- A petition seeking injunctive relief states a claim when it alleges a protectable property interest and a non-speculative threat of substantial harm from an impending withdrawal that would materially diminish the common supply.

## Conclusion

The court reinstated the landowners’ declaratory and injunctive action, holding that the pleaded dispute was justiciable and that Missouri groundwater law limits percolating-water withdrawals by a reasonable-use rule with correlative rights, potentially barring municipal pumping and export that would substantially deplete a shared aquifer and impair neighboring landowners’ reasonable uses.


Higday v. Nickolaus, 469 S.W.2d 859 (Mo. Ct. App. 1971)