In 2010, the Utah Legislature passed the Public Waters Access Act that restricted some 2,700 miles of access to more than 43% of the state’s fishable waters. As a result, the Utah Stream Access Coalition or USAC was formed with hopes of reclaiming some of these fishing spots.
Bert Ley is the vice president and director of USAC. He says water that flows over privately owned stream beds should be off limits, but not along one of the state’s largest rivers.
“There’s a reason for landowners to be able to keep folks off of small rivers and small streams on their property. But when we're talking about the Provo River, we're talking about really one of the crown jewels of Utah's blue-ribbon fisheries.”
Ley says there is a long history of the public using all the streams and rivers in Utah – starting the day after Brigham Young and Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake valley.
“July 25, 1847, it was announced that there would be no private ownership of the water streams,” he said. “That's in [author] B.H. Roberts’ history of the LDS church. The early pioneers recognized we had a limited resource that we needed to share.”
To protect these rights, Ley says USAC has filed two lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Public Waters Access Act. USAC lost its first case on a technicality. The group won the second case and argued that many of the state’s largest rivers were used for commerce well before Utah became a state and federal law says if a river is used for commerce, that highway of commerce must remain open in perpetuity.
With Utah lawmakers supportive of private property rights, he says some of the beds along the larger rivers, like the Provo, have been privately deeded. Landowners are now asserting they have the right to exclude others from accessing the river front.
“The problem is the state of Utah has never really addressed which of our rivers meet this standard of navigability,” Ley said.
The conflict on the Provo, he says, has been ongoing but came to a head last year when a new landowner acquired a parcel from someone who had allowed unfettered access to the river for decades and posted no trespassing signs.
“There's a big conflict now between the new owner who's trying to effectively privatize the river that we've all enjoyed for decades. Since before they were even Utahns. I've fished it for 25 years. I know people who fished it for 70 years, and they can't go where they've gone for 70 years now. That's wrong.”
But Oakley resident Pat Cone, whose family has owned property along the Weber River for generations says there are times when access should be closed. Cone owns 300 feet of the Weber River on both the north and south banks. The south bank abuts a public easement and his house is just 15 feet from the river. He says it’s wrong when people think they can get to a river by crossing private property.
“I don't really want people walking through my property. This is a privacy thing. Like I said, people can leave garbage and they can leave footprints and wreck landscaping and gardening and things like that. I don’t want people walking through here.”
However, Cone is more lenient than many private property owners. He allows children 12 and younger – if they ask for permission – to access the river by his home.
“I think it's important for kids to have a place to be able to go fish and so I kind of kick the adults out if they come up here, especially if they don't even ask,” he said.
Cone is also agreeable to having a trail built on the north side of the Weber – across the river from his house - to connect to the Stevens Grove Trail to allow public access away from his home.
Ley says one solution for the lower Provo would be for the Division of Wildlife Resources to file a quiet title action and get the public rights established. Or the Forestry, Fire and State Lands division could declare that the river meets the standard of historical commercial use. But he says the agencies aren’t stepping up without legislative support.
He says an attempt to run a bill in 2022 to do that didn’t make it out of committee. But a year later lawmakers approved a bill to deal with criminal trespassing on private property for recreational purposes, now punishable by a Class B misdemeanor, similar to assault or a DUI.
In the meantime, Ley says the cause has hit a roadblock and USAC is working to find a lawmaker willing to fight the fight.
