A legal conundrum has stalled plans for a major development at Takhini Hot Springs in Yukon.

Owners of the hot springs plan to spend millions to develop their 60-hectare land holdings.

The pool now in use was built around 1970, but the springs have been used for centuries and commercially for more than 100 years. There's also a campground and some other facilities on site.

Its owners want to build new, more natural looking pools. They're also looking to add residential and vacation homes as well as other types of accommodation such as a hotel.

Last year, they got the Yukon Government’s approval to subdivide the land, but the Surveyor General balked at their plans.

A 1949 original survey of the hot springs area shows a stream bed trickling out of the property. While that trickle has long dried up, the stream bed remains public land.

Gary Umbrich, president of the Hot Springs Corporation, said it’s a minor legal problem that has forced him to petition the Yukon Supreme Court.

"So the question is around whether that trickle of water needs to be surveyed, and if it does need to be surveyed, where is it?" he said.

"It's a bit of a funny issue to be in front of a judge because of a trickle of water, but I guess it does have ramifications… We don't have certainty in the Yukon when we buy land because there could be a skeleton in the closet in the form of an old survey that has a piece of information that could be on it that's not on the new survey and that could come back to haunt the land owner," said Umbrich.

Yukon Government land officials acknowledge the old stream bed in question no longer exists, but they've refused to intervene.

"It is phantom, the stream doesn't exist anymore. If it did, we might take a different position," said Colin McDowell, the Lands Branch director for the government.

Umbrich hopes a Yukon Supreme court judge can settle the dispute later this month.