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The Right To Float: The Need For The Colorado Legislature To Clarify River Access Rights, Cory Helton
The Right To Float: The Need For The Colorado Legislature To Clarify River Access Rights, Cory Helton
University of Colorado Law Review
For years, Colorado judges and legislators have struggled to clearly define and delineate public access rights for rivers running through private property. In Colorado, it is settled law that land underlying non-navigable streams is the subject of private ownership, but beyond this basic principle, little is settled. As a result, a dispute has developed between private landowners exercising their right to exclude individuals from their land and recreational river users seeking access to Colorado's rivers. The failure to resolve this longstanding dispute jeopardizes Colorado's multimillion dollar commercial rafting industry and creates avoidable transaction costs. This Note examines the right-to-float debate …
Alive But Irrelevant: The Prior Appropriation Doctrine In Today's Western Water Law, Reed D. Benson
Alive But Irrelevant: The Prior Appropriation Doctrine In Today's Western Water Law, Reed D. Benson
University of Colorado Law Review
The Prior Appropriation Doctrine has long been the foundation of laws governing water allocation and use in the American West, but it has been under pressure from forces both external and internal to the western states. Twenty years ago, Prior Appropriation was pronounced dead in a provocative essay by Charles Wilkinson. Other scholars argued that it was still alive, but it now appears to have lost its force as the controlling doctrine of western water law. This Article analyzes three recent cases upholding state laws that undermine a fundamental Prior Appropriation principle, then considers the water policy implications of the …