In
2008 Utah Supreme Court issued a decision that because state law
declares that all water in Utah is public property, therefore the
public has an implied easement to play in the water and touch the
stream beds that lie beneath, even if they are privately owned.
That
clearly means folks can use the public water to swim, boat, fish, wade,
hunt, and touch privately owned stream beds as long as they don't
injure the landowner unnecessarily.
Last
year Utah anglers and water users organized and defeated a bill that
would have severely restricted access to those "public waters". I
was told personally by several legislators that they "had to tell
leadership that they were sorry, but because of all the phone calls
that they had to vote their constituency."
What a novel thought!
This
year we have seen two competing bills that would govern boating and
fishing in public waters on privately owned stream beds. One, HB80,
would formalize public access to "public waters" using the standard of
"mean high water mark" as used by most other western states to define
the public access area.
The
other, HB141, would amend the 1919 law that was the foundation of the
court's decision and prohibit public access to private stream beds
unless the property owner grants permission or the private stream bed
has been used by the public for recreation for 10 consecutive years,
thus making 14,000 miles of "public waters" non public.
Utah
prides itself and spends a lot of taxpayers' money promoting "quality
of life", "recreate where you work", the place to locate your outdoor
recreation business, the place to come for your convention and the
place to spend your out of state recreation dollars.
The economic impact of hunting,
fishing, boating, birding on the State is huge.
Just picture the current state advertising campaign
featuring the car with boats and several other toys stacked on top!
How can you help?
Today! Tomorrow! This
weekend! For sure by Monday!
If you live in Utah - terrific!
If you live outside of Utah - even better!
Call or email:
Michael G. Waddoups, (R)
President of the Senate
waddoups@utahsenate.org
Home: (801) 967-0225
(801) 278-7667
