Recently, Texas installed a 1,000-foot-long floating buoy system in the Rio Grande. The United States filed suit against Texas. (For those playing at home, the suit was field in Austin, where the Capitol sits, and not in the Rio Grande valley, where the case arose.) DOJ argues that Texas has violated the Rivers and Harbors Act, which prohibits placing certain structures in navigable waters. Texas has now filed its reply. Texas makes several arguments based on the statute:
The segment of the river where the buoy system has been deployed is not navigable; even if it were, the buoy system does not decrease the navigable capacity of the river; and the buoy system is not a boom or other structure prohibited under the Act.
However, Texas also makes an alternative argument based on constitutional avoidance:
