Landowners in Colorado may be facing another showdown over access to privately owned waterways. Sparked by a recently completed land swap in Summit and Grand counties, there is a renewed effort to open these corridors to the public for recreation, including the right to float and the right to wade. There is a corresponding push to have a bill introduced during the current legislative session. An August 2025 Issue Brief by Legislative Council Staff provides a non-partisan summary of court cases and formal opinions that have shaped river access in the state to date. Today, approximately 40% of land in Colorado is public (mostly located in the scenic mountain west), and there are over 6,000 miles of public access streams across the state. Coloradans value recreation, a major economic driver, and Coloradans simultaneously place a high value on wildlife and land conservation. Opening the waterways up to the public for recreation will put new pressure on the fish, wildlife, the environment, and every taxpayer in the state.  

 

Proponents of public access point to Montana as the gold standard. Montana allows public recreation access to all surface waters and underlying/adjacent land up to the ordinary high water mark regardless of ownership. A simple Google search for the impacts of public access to Montana’s rivers paints a much clearer picture of the challenges and drawbacks to this model. Proponents also point to Colorado’s unclear/unsettled legal definition of “navigable” and conflate that comparison with permitted public access to waterways. Even though Colorado has not clarified the definition of navigable, it is like the majority of western states that do not allow broad public access to privately owned waterways. Only Montana and New Mexico allow broad public access under and along waterways (regardless of navigability) to the high water mark. On the other end of the spectrum, Arizona recognizes only the Colorado River as navigable and open to the public for recreation, and despite the state’s waters being owned by the public and subject to appropriation (as in Colorado), it does not have a broadly defined right for the public to float through private property.  Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming,  like Colorado today, all restrict public access to floating through lands that have privately owned streambeds.  

 

Closer to home, the aforementioned land swap has reignited the push for public access to waterways in Colorado. In this swap, 1,489 public acres were privatized. This gave rise to a warning  in an opinion article about “an emerging aspect of the continued effort to privatize our shared public lands.”  What was omitted in that warning was the 1,830 acres of private land that is now public, including a new Recreation Area with over 2 miles of hiking trails and wheelchair-accessible platforms for fishing. Additionally, new access to 1.5 miles of the Blue River that was previously only accessible by those with the resources to float now includes trail access. The land swap was widely celebrated as a net benefit since it opened up more land and river to a much broader segment of the recreating public. 

 

Colorado is a magnet for outdoor recreation and pressure is high on this resource. If waterways become public, it is only a matter of time until the State is tasked with impact studies, access and use management, and environmental mitigation when overuse damages the natural resource (example: permit-only access to Hanging Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park). Designating Colorado’s waterways as public will be expensive to litigate, expensive to implement, and expensive to manage – all for the benefit of a select segment of the recreating public. If this proposal gains momentum, taxpayers may be funding a very small group’s recreational goals.

 

Many landowners, including those who have owned for generations, make significant contributions to the land and water resources they own. These privately held properties often provide a respite for fish and wildlife as they move away from the increasing pressure on the public lands. Many landowners in Colorado are committed and capable stewards of their land and water resources, and many of them protect and enhance those resources at their own expense. Public access along historically privately owned waterways would have a significantly negative impact on aquatic species and wildlife as well as the natural environments where they are allowed to thrive.