O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 12-3-81 (2019)

Department named custodian of submerged cultural resources; rules and regulations; reporting findings; duties of state archeologist

✓ O.C.G.A. — 2019 edition (Public.Resource.Org Release 73)

Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.

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(a) The custodian of all submerged cultural resources shall be the Department of Natural Resources. The Board of Natural Resources is empowered to promulgate such rules and regulations as may be necessary to preserve, survey, protect, and recover such underwater properties and are necessary for the effective administration of this part.

(b) All findings of submerged cultural resources shall be reported to the department within two days, Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays excluded, after being found.

(c) The state archeologist shall have such duties in conducting and supervising the surveillance, protection, preservation, survey, and recovery of submerged cultural resources as he is given by Code Section 12-3-53 for similar land resources.

History

Code 1981, § 12-3-81, enacted by Ga. L. 1985, p. 906, § 4; Ga. L. 1988, p. 945, § 2.

Administrative rules and regulations. - Submerged cultural resources, Official Compilation of the Rules and Reg-

ulations of the State of Georgia, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Protection, Subject 391-5-9.

Annotations

JUDICIAL DECISIONS Neither O.C.G.A. § 12-3-81 nor O.C.G.A. § 12-3-82(a) are unconstitutional because the statutes do not impinge on federal salvage law and the statutes are not preempted by federal salvage law. Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 584 F. Supp. 2d 1367 (S.D. Ga. 2008), aff ’d, 594 F.3d 1330 (11th Cir. Ga. 2010). State’s right to underwater abandoned pre-cut logs. - State of Georgia asserted a colorable claim to abandoned pre-cut logs that sank in a Georgia river decades earlier under O.C.G.A. § 12-3-81 and the Submerged Lands Act of 1953, 43 U.S.C. § 1311(a)(1), which was one of three grounds the state was required to establish in order to assert the state’s immunity from suit under U.S. Const.,

amend. XI and deprive a federal district court of jurisdiction over a salvor’s suit to recover the logs. Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 584 F. Supp. 2d 1367 (S.D. Ga. 2008), aff ’d, 594 F.3d 1330 (11th Cir. Ga. 2010). Constructive possession of submerged logs, as claimed by intervenor state under O.C.G.A. §§ 12-3-81 and 12-3-82, was an insufficient interest in the logs to permit the state to assert the state’s sovereign immunity to bar plaintiff salvor’s suit under U.S. Const., amend. XI; the state did not have possession so as to defeat admiralty jurisdiction due to Eleventh Amendment immunity. Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 632 F. Supp. 2d 1342 (M.D. Ga. 2008).

RESEARCH REFERENCES ALR. - Validity, construction, and application of Submerged Lands Act (SLA) of

1953, 43 U.S.C.A. §§ 1301 et seq., 68 A.L.R. Fed. 2d 363.

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 2 cases, 2008–2008 · leading case: Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-Cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 584 F. Supp. 2d 1367 (S.D. Ga. 2008).

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Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-Cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 584 F. Supp. 2d 1367 (S.D. Ga. 2008). · cites it 6× “” Ga.Code Ann. § 12-3-81 (2008). In a separate statute, the General Assembly required that “[a]ny person desiring to conduct investigation, survey, or recovery operations, in the course of which any part of a submerged cultural resource may be endangered,.”

Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-Cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 632 F. Supp. 2d 1342 (M.D. Ga. 2008). · cites it 2× “” Based on the Supreme Court’s opinions in Deep Sea Research and The Davis , this Court holds that the State of Georgia does not have “actual possession” of the in rem Defendant logs, and did not have “actual possession” of the representative log retrieved from the Flint River,…”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.