The United States issued a Quiet Title Act Disclaimer and asked U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason to confirm what the State of Alaska has argued for the last seven years: The North Fork of the Fortymile River is navigable and the submerged lands between its high-water marks are owned by Alaska.
“My Administration has been working tirelessly to end senseless disputes over lands Alaska has owned since Statehood, and we finally have a federal partner committed to doing the same,” Governor Mike Dunleavy said in a Dec. 29 announcement. “President Trump made clear on day one that the Department of Interior should work with Alaska on the disputes over title to its lands, and his administration is now putting that directive into action. By working with the Trump Administration and the Department of the Interior, we are replacing ceaseless courtroom fights with a lawful, common-sense process that recognizes Alaska’s ownership of its submerged lands and lets the state manage them for the benefit of all Alaskans.”
The North Fork disclaimer marks the first since the United States began reviewing its navigability program pursuant to President Trump’s Day One Executive Order focused on Alaska.
An announcement from the Dept. of Law noted that Alaska’s navigable waters support social and economic development across the state, including transportation routes, fishing and hunting opportunities and access to homesites and minerals.
“With today’s filing in the Fortymile case, the Department of the Interior comes a step closer to acknowledging what Alaska Native communities, hunters, and recreation enthusiasts have known for a long time: there are thousands of miles of navigable rivers and millions of acres of navigable lakes in Alaska,” Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox noted. “Yet sadly, for nearly 65 years, the federal government hasn’t kept its promise that Alaska would be on an equal footing with other states – often and repeatedly disputing access to and management of waterways it promised at statehood, and forcing needless uncertainty on communities, recreation, and development.”
Cox praised Trump for ending this posture and directing Interior to divest navigable waters to the state as the law requires.
“We are grateful for Interior’s decision and believe today’s resolution marks the start of a new course downriver, finally complying with the President’s order and keeping the promise made in 1959,” he said.
An announcement from the Dept. of Law noted that Alaska’s navigable waters support social and economic development across the state, including transportation routes, fishing and hunting opportunities and access to homesites and minerals.
For decades, however, Alaska has been denied the right to govern its navigable waters.
The Dept. of Law statement noted that the federal government’s decision to finally conclude disputes over the Fortymile River came only under legal pressure on the eve of a trial.
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“This is not an efficient use of federal resources,” the department noted. “This case, like many others, has seen years of dispute and significant federal expenditures only to reach an outcome that could have been reached with good-faith negotiation and fair federal processes before it even began. Accordingly, the State will be working with the Department of Interior to fully implement the current, settled law affecting these cases and to avoid these wasteful disputes in the future.”
“It should not take years of litigation to recognize the State’s title to clearly navigable rivers,” said Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner-Designee John Crowther. “The DNR Public Access Assertion and Defense section works very carefully to ensure that the submerged lands the State makes claims to are unquestionably navigable under law. This disclaimer is a vindication of all that hard work. We need changes in the federal approaches to prevent this wasteful cycle from repeating.”
This disclaimer brings to conclusion a series of in-court and administrative proceedings the State has pursued dating back more than a decade related to ownership of the clearly navigable Fortymile River submerged lands. Rather than a single, comprehensive process, the State has had to incrementally pursue and challenge every portion of the river.
Now, the United States completes the job, disclaiming the last remaining 16 miles of the bed of the upper North Fork.
Read the Disclaimer and Motion here.
