| Need to include work done at: MSA SC 5458-82-28 and the title searches for original lots 69/76, lots that would be concerned with any riparian rights vested in the owner including any impact the laws of 1745, 1784, 1835, 1862, and the annotated code of 1860 may have had on those rights. It will also be necessary to determine if the condemnation/and or acquisition of those lots had the effect of just compensation surrender to the state of any and all privately held riparian rights to the City acting as the agent of the State. That the city did acquire all private property rights through the acquisition of the title to those lots upon which and from which the municipal pier was constructed ca. 1913 seems likely, and that what the City and/or State can and cannot grant or license with regard to the filling in of any land under navigable water appears to be subject to the 1862 constraints, once dredging has taken place recreating or enhancing tidal wetlands, and the 1970 Wetlands law. In otherwords the City/and or the State in Baltimore City can take back private lands and rights to private wetlands, but cannot conversely agree to return those lands and private wetlands to private ownership, once they have been returned to lands under tidal/navigable waters. If based upon sufficient evidence hereafter cited, it would appear that with regard to the Municipal/Recreation Pier, the only course the City/and or the State has, is to license the use of the waters and lands under the water of the pier as public wetlands in accord with statute, and that there is no, and can be no, private wetland interest in any lands under the waters under the pier, as far as the water is tidal to mean high tide under the pier. If sustained by the facts and references below, it is the Commissoner's advice to the Board of Public Works, subject to a formal review and hearing of the Commissioner, that the arguements put forth by counsel with regard to the private rights of anyone obtaining title to the Recreation pier from the City does not extend to the lands under the water under the pier, nor does the City or the State have the right to fill in that land to make the land under the pier fast land. The only rights that can be conveyed are those of a public wetlands license in which the license holder agrees not to disturb or otherwise impair the public wetlands. [draft; ecp 9/16/2008]
Condemnation powers of the City for the Municipal Wharf are to be found at:
CHAPTER 485, Laws of 1910
AN ACT to empower the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore
to issue its stock to an amount not exceeding five million
dollars ($5,000,000) for the purpose of defraying the costs
and expenses of laying out, projecting, constructing and
establishing a pier or piers adjacent to and along the Patapsco river and its tributaries, both within the limits of the
City of Baltimore, including therein the acquisition of property and streets, the alteration and construction of wharves,
docks and piers and of warehouses, sheds, structures and
buildings, with the right to lease the same, the laying out,
closing, grading and paving of streets, or diminishing and
the cleaning of the harbor or basin and the channels and
channel approaches, the fixing of buoys and the doing of all
other things that may be necessary to carry out the proper
and final completion of a pier or piers, adjacent to and along
the Patapsco river and its tributaries, both within the limits
of the said City of Baltimore; to authorize the submission of
ordinances to that end to the legal voters of the City of Baltimore; and to clothe the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore
with full power and authority to carry into effect the improvements and public work mentioned.
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