The navigability question that's been simmering since Alaska statehood just got four more answers

The Bureau of Land Management has issued four navigability decisions in the past 90 days affirming that Alaska owns the submerged lands beneath certain rivers and lakes — moving the state another small step forward in a quiet ownership fight that's been running, waterbody by waterbody, since 1959.

The underlying question is straightforward. Under the Equal Footing Doctrine and the Submerged Lands Act, title to lands beneath navigable waters passed to Alaska at statehood; title beneath non-navigable waters stayed federal. Sixty-six years later, much of the state's waterbody inventory has still never been formally determined as one or the other — and the answer matters for who controls riverbeds, who issues permits for crossings and rights-of-way, who manages mineral rights, and what Native corporations actually received in ANCSA conveyances.

The new decisions, called Recordable Disclaimers of Interest, formally clear federal interest from the submerged lands at issue. BLM only issues them when a specific federal need triggers the question — a court case, a right-of-way review, a proposed state or Native corporation conveyance. A January 2026 Federal Register notice opened the latest such process for portions of the East Fork, with a decision after April 7.

The current decisions build on a longer legal history. In State of Alaska v. Ahtna, Inc. (2000), an Alaska court held that if a waterbody was navigable at statehood, title to its submerged lands had passed to Alaska — and BLM lacked authority to convey those lands to Ahtna, the Native regional corporation for the upper Copper River area. That ruling has shaped the legal terrain on which BLM and the state have been negotiating, river by river, ever since.

Alaska's Navigable Waters GIS layer has been updated to reflect the new determinations, giving landowners, guides, and subsistence users clearer notice about who manages which riverbeds and what permits they need. The determinations do not, by themselves, change water-use rights on the ground.

BLM called the four decisions historic. They are, in a sense — but they're also a small piece of a fight that, at the current pace, will take decades more to resolve.