Short answer. Only for public use benefitting a community, never for a private person's convenience. Article 640 provides that compulsory easements for drawing water or watering animals can be imposed only for reasons of public use in favor of a town or village, after payment of the proper indemnity.
What the law says
Compulsory easements for drawing water or for watering animals can be imposed only for reasons of public use in favor of a town or village, after payment of the proper indemnity.
Civil Code, Article 640 — Drawing Water and Watering Animals. Read the full provision →
The easement serves the public, not an individual
Article 640 puts a firm limit on when this kind of easement can be forced on a private landowner. It states that these compulsory easements can be imposed only for reasons of public use in favor of a town or village. That means a private neighbour cannot compel you to let him cross your land to draw water for his own household or to bring his animals to your spring. The burden may be imposed only where the community as a whole benefits — the town or village — and only for the public purpose the article names. A purely private need does not qualify.
Two purposes only
The article covers two specific uses: drawing water and watering animals. These are traditional community needs, from a time when a village depended on shared access to a water source. The easement lets the public reach that water across intervening private land. But it is confined to those purposes. It is not a general right of passage, not an irrigation right for a single farm, and not a licence to use the water for any other end. When the required public purpose is absent, the compulsory easement under this article simply does not arise.
Indemnity is required
Even where the public-use requirement is met, the landowner does not give up the use of his land for nothing. Article 640 grants the easement only after payment of the proper indemnity. The owner whose property must now bear the passage of people or animals to reach water is entitled to be compensated. So the imposition of the easement and the payment of indemnity go together: the public may gain access, but the servient owner must be paid for the burden the community places on his land.
What this means for a private request
If a neighbour is demanding access across your property to draw water or bring livestock to drink, and the demand is for his own benefit rather than the town's, Article 640 does not support him. The compulsory version of this easement is reserved for public use in favor of a town or village. That does not stop neighbours from agreeing voluntarily to such an arrangement on their own terms, and other easement rules may apply to different situations. But the power to force the easement on you exists only within the narrow public-use boundary this article draws, and only against payment.