Ecological and Legal Significance of the Implementation of the Principle of Water Bodies and Hydraulic Structures Relationship that Form the Water Management System: Based on Court Practice Analysis

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The paper examines the issues of the legal status of water management systems and their elements in the aspect of the implementation of the principle of water legislation, which establishes the regulation of water relations based on the water bodies and hydraulic structures relationship that form the water management system. The author gives a general description of this principle and reveals its significance in regulating relations for the use and protection of water bodies. The main attention in the paper is given to the analysis of the judicial interpretation of the principle of the relationship between water bodies and hydraulic structures that form the water management system, when considering cases related to property rights to hydraulic structures. Such disputes, as a rule, are due to the fact that water bodies are in the ownership of the Russian Federation, with which hydraulic structures are actually connected, then the hydraulic structures turn out to be owned by a legal entity or individual. The author shows under what conditions the courts interpret the «relationship» of a water body and a hydraulic structure as a property one, by analogy with the principle of the unity of a land plot history, and under which conditions they recognize the existence of an independent legal status for each of the objects that make up the water management system. Based on the results of the study, the author concluded that there is no proper legal regulation in terms of the procedure for distributing property rights to a hydraulic structure and a water body as components of the water management system, as well as in terms of establishing the legal status of the water management system as a single property complex. This is the reason for the lack of uniformity in the judicial practice in resolving property disputes in relation to water management systems and the interpretation of the principle under consideration.