BLM affirms Alaska owns submerged lands beneath four waterways

The Bureau of Land Management issued four navigability decisions in the past 90 days affirming Alaska owns submerged lands beneath certain rivers and lakes, resolving ownership questions that affect state land managers, Native corporations receiving adjacent conveyances, and federal agencies managing conservation units. BLM described the decisions as historic.

The decisions, called Recordable Disclaimers of Interest, formally disclaim any federal interest in the submerged lands once BLM determines a waterbody was navigable at statehood. Under the equal footing doctrine and Submerged Lands Act, title to land beneath navigable waters passed to Alaska at statehood. Title to lands beneath non-navigable waters remained federal.

BLM says it only makes navigability determinations when there is a federal interest in deciding title to submerged lands: when a case goes to court concerning who owns the land beneath the waterbody, when the federal government needs to know whether to review a right-of-way permit proposal for the land beneath a river, when deciding whether to approve a state land exchange or proposed conveyance to a Native corporation, or when the federal government needs certainty about ownership of the submerged land beneath a waterbody for other administrative reasons.

The recordable-disclaimer process can include public notice and comment. A January 7, 2026 Federal Register notice opened a BLM recordable-disclaimer process for submerged lands underlying portions of the East Fork and set a comment period before a decision date after April 7, 2026.

The rulings are part of a longer ownership dispute. In State of Alaska v. Ahtna, Inc., a 2000 Alaska title-navigability case held that if a waterbody was navigable at statehood, title to the submerged lands passed to Alaska and the BLM lacked power to convey those lands to Ahtna. The decision is part of the legal background for later federal and state ownership determinations in Alaska.

Alaska's Navigable Waters GIS layer has been updated to reflect the new ownership determinations, giving landowners, guides, and subsistence users clearer notice about who manages riverbeds and what permits are required for infrastructure or right-of-way projects. The Navigable Waters datasets used for title purposes represent waterbodies where BLM has made a navigability determination. The navigability determinations resolve ownership of submerged lands and do not directly change on-the-ground water use rights.