According to the court documents, private ownership of the land abutting the river where Hill wants to fish can be traced back to a federal land grant.
Hill’s position is that the Arkansas River was navigable when Colorado first became a state in 1876 and therefore the state controls the river bed.
Justice Melissa Hart wrote the court’s opinion:
“This dispute has produced hundreds of pages of briefing,” she wrote. “The subjects (of those briefings) are ultimately irrelevant to the issue before us. Rather, this case requires us to answer just one question: whether Roger Hill has a legally protected interest that affords him standing to pursue his claim...”
“He does not,” she wrote. “Hill has no legally protected right independent of the State’s alleged ownership of the riverbed onto which he can hook his declaratory judgment claim.”
Squillace said the judgment is disappointing, but “on the positive side, this does nothing to end our campaign to assure that the public has access to our navigable waterways in Colorado.”
He said they are deciding their next steps. It’s possible they’ll ask the court to reconsider its decision.