Legislators in Bismarck may be voting on a bill next year aiming to exclude pre-statehood patent land that was transferred to landowners when North Dakota became a state in 1889.
The reason for this question is because some of this land is currently under Devils Lake. North Dakota’s Sovereign Lands Act claims once land is under “navigable water” it automatically belongs to the state.
District 15 Representative Kathy Frelich presented her bill to the Agriculture and Water Management Committee on Tuesday this week. She says this question has caused confusion and turmoil for landowners in the Devils Lake Basin for years.
"As the statute is currently written, landowners inundated by navigable water automatically lose their legal standings to even bring a claim for inverse condemnation or quiet title. The statute not only erases their ownership status, but shuts them out of the courthouse, because they no longer have the legal standing of owners to pursue remedies. If you look at the bill, as it stands now with the amendment, you can see my recommendation: we exclude these pre-statehood patent lands, and we put the responsibility on the state to prove the lands are submerged by natural means."
Landowners claim the construction of the Tolna Coulee dam in 2012 exacerbated the artificial means of water storage in the basin. Frelich says about 200,000 acres of land are submerged in the lake. This bill would address about one percent of that.
The bill was forwarded to Legislative Management.
