The undersigned parties are private owners of properties along non-navigable sections of the upper Toccoa River. We are submitting this petition to request that the Members of Georgia’s HR1554 House Study Committee on Navigable Streams uphold and protect our property rights when the Committee issues its recommendations prior to disbanding on December 1st, 2024. Specifically, we are requesting that the Committee recommend against pursuing any new legislation to reclassify privately owned lands and stream beds as being navigable streams under state law.

We’ve worked our entire lives to be able to purchase and enjoy these properties, most of which are being used as our retirement homes. Many of us are angling enthusiasts and we purchased these properties primarily due to the fact that they included ownership rights on a section of a high quality private trout stream. That is what makes these properties special and priceless to us, we cherish these privately owned waters and we’ve been responsibly managing and stocking them with our own funds for generations. We encourage and primarily practice catch-and-release using fly fishing methods or fishing with single hook artificial lures which is more conservative than public fishing regulations allow. As a result of these stewardship efforts the river and the fishery appear to be healthier today than they’ve ever been, particularly within the private stretches, and DNR field agents share this opinion.

With respect but candor to all parties, we are alarmed by the advocacy for a new legislative path that would broaden the definition of a navigable stream in the state in order to reclassify these small streams as being navigable for the express purpose of taking these properties from private landowners like us and opening them up for public hunting and fishing. To make this even more offensive there was unsubstantiated commentary at a committee meeting that our property rights, including protections under the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution, would not be an obstacle to the state in attempting to take our lands because there are cases where the government has been able to successfully take private properties, even without compensation. The implication that the state can trample on our private property owner rights, including circumventing Constitutional protections for private property owners involved in government takings of their private land, is misleading at best, dangerous at worst, and it is entirely and unequivocally refuted.

Counsel has advised that riparian and waterfront features of properties are inarguably the single most valuable property characteristics according to appraisal experts, and federal as well as state Constitutional requirements for compensation associated with the governmental taking of private property for public use must be quantified and considered before any legislation changing Georgia’s property and navigability laws are pursued, and fair compensation for a taking of this magnitude would be a staggering figure. The state is contemplating an unprecedented epic land grab through legislative means that would infringe on our property rights as well as those of thousands of Georgia residents across the state. This is not just wrong, it’s un-American. We felt compelled to respectfully advise the committee that we will challenge this if necessary, as we would expect thousands of other private property owners across the state would as well.

Regardless of our rights, we ask that you also consider the health of the involved waterways. News media, social media and forum discussions will swiftly promote awareness of the opening of these small waterways that have historically been privately owned and stocked and they will of course be quickly overfished. Generations of stewardship efforts will be decimated in a matter of days. No amount of state stockings will be able to maintain the existing fisheries that we have established with our own funds in these small streams if they are subjected to public fishing pressure. Furthermore, as noted in some of the testimony, an entire industry of countless professional guide services across the state who manage their own private streams and/or have responsible partnerships with private owners would also be decimated. These are the realities, no honest angler who has fished both private and public waterways would tell you otherwise. This is not a responsible path forward.

Finally, please consider that any new legislative path forward that forces a challenge from private property owners would needlessly place the public’s existing rights at risk. Some have argued that float throughs of private waterways are a legal right based on a broad and tenuous interpretation of a public common law right of passage. Most would agree that this is an arguable contention. Case law shows that this argument may not just possibly fail under challenge, that’s the likely outcome. However, the undersigned private property owners have never felt a need to challenge this. Allowing public float throughs has always felt right even though the vast preponderance of case law shows it’s a privilege that requires landowner permission and not a legal right. It’s not difficult to imagine that hearts and minds will quickly sour on continuing to look favorably on public float throughs if the state forces a protracted, costly and contentious court challenge to prevent the taking of these private lands from us. To be clear, we do not want that outcome, it’s unnecessary.

We believe the Committee’s proceedings have in fact shown that there is one clearly superior and compelling solution that would best serve the interests of all parties while causing the least amount of harm and risk to the existing rights of all parties, and that is to maintain the status quo under the existing regulatory framework. This is already a compromise solution that’s been working for decades and the health of the river and the fishery has irrefutably benefitted from it. The status quo under the existing regulatory framework strikes a near perfect balance of protecting the rights of property owners, protecting the health of these waterways and their fisheries, and protecting the rights of the public who can access the entire waterway here on the Toccoa and have hunting and fishing rights in all but a few small private stretches of the river.

There have been no legislative paths forward introduced in any of the Committee’s meetings that would result in more benefit than harm. There is clearly more risk than potential benefit in any such attempt to legislate a way to sanction the taking of thousands of miles privately held and responsibly managed streambed property from us and the thousands of other streamside private property owners across the state. If the committee’s recommendations and the states subsequent actions force us to defend our rights, we will do so, and that will needlessly risk further eroding the float through rights that the public currently enjoys in many of these non-navigable privately owned streams.

If Georgia moves forward with this effort they will not be viewed as the state that expanded public access for hunting and fishing enthusiasts, they will become known as the state that sanctioned one of the most draconian land grabs from private property owners in the history of the nation that only resulted in the degradation of irreplaceable waterways and responsibly managed fisheries. We are prepared to aggressively challenge this but we trust and hope you each agree that the ends of such an effort would objectively not justify the means.

We thank you in advance for standing up for our rights and for the rights of all Georgia property owners by recommending against pursuing any new legislation to reclassify privately owned lands and stream beds as being navigable streams under state law.