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When Colorado entered the Union in 1876, it determined there were no navigable rivers within the its borders at the time of statehood. In doing so, the state rejected the doctrine of public trust. That choice was not a minor detail of constitutional housekeeping; it created a system of private property and water rights—anchored in ownership of riverbeds to the thread of the stream—that has endured for 150 years and shaped the very identity of the state.

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To grasp the stakes of undoing that system today, it helps to place the issue in historical context. With the tragic exception of the seizure of Native American lands, the largest takings in U.S. history have all been localized in scope. Japanese American families, forced from their homes during World War II, lost more than a billion dollars in property in 1940s dollars. Mid-century urban renewal and highway programs wiped out entire neighborhoods in Detroit, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., displacing more than a million people. Great federal dam and reclamation projects like Glen Canyon flooded valleys and relocated towns. Each of those episodes was massive and painful. Yet none attempted what is now being proposed in Colorado: a single legislative act imposing a blanket easement across thousands of miles of private riverbeds and tens of thousands of privately owned parcels all at once. By scale and by cost, that would amount to one of the largest government takings of private property in American history.

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The legal mechanism that makes this so clear is the right to exclude. Courts have repeatedly held that when government authorizes strangers to physically enter private land, it is not merely regulating property but appropriating it. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid reaffirmed that principle: granting outsiders access is a per se taking, full stop. A state law that suddenly allowed the public to wade and fish on private riverbeds would fit that description exactly. Colorado cannot give away what it does not own without paying for it.

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And the cost would be staggering. Colorado has more than 90,000 miles of rivers and streams. Not all are perennial or fishable, but thousands of miles flow through private property. Under current law, those beds are part of the taxable property base that supports counties, school districts, and local services. A statute opening them to public use would instantly reduce their value. Assessors would be required to recognize that encumbrance, shrinking the tax base. Rural schools and local governments, already stretched thin, would take the hit first. Because Colorado’s school finance system relies on local assessed value, the state would have to backfill the lost revenue—shifting the burden to every taxpayer.

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The liability doesn’t stop there. Compensation for the taking itself would run into billions, as property owners pressed claims for the fair value of the access rights that had been stripped away. Each parcel along each river mile becomes a potential case file. Boundary disputes over the thread of the stream, accretion and erosion, or the definition of “touching” would multiply. The courts would face a flood of inverse-condemnation suits. The Attorney General’s office would be forced to hire teams of appraisers, experts, and outside counsel. Instead of bringing clarity, a statewide right to wade would unleash years of costly uncertainty.

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Colorado’s settled framework has lasted a century and a half because it balances access and ownership: the public has the right to float, but not to trespass; property owners have clear title, and their tax payments support schools and counties. To reverse that with the stroke of a pen is not just a policy shift. It is an attempt at the largest legislative taking of private property in modern U.S. history—with the bill sent directly to Colorado taxpayers.