American Whitewater uses a variety of tools and approaches to locate and secure permanent access to the places that we love. Our mission, “to protect and restore America’s whitewater rivers and to enhance opportunities to enjoy them safely,” is the guiding principle of our work. Through our access work, our conservation ethic motivates us to go beyond securing access to rivers to ensuring that what we do brings long-term protections to the river. We do this primarily through our stewardship efforts, working closely with resource agencies, educating the public, and providing the tools that river advocates need to protect their home river.
Our river access work uses a variety of tools to enhance and secure river access throughout the country, including tracking and influencing access related legislation and policies, and advocating for stronger rights of passage on rivers that flow through private lands (i.e. protecting navigability).
We work to educate the public, boaters, landowners, and resource agencies about access laws and everyone’s rights and responsibilities. We also occasionally work closely with land trusts and community and agency partners to acquire land and in a few cases American Whitewater owns and manages access points. American Whitewater also provides technical assistance and training on river access design for river managers and community organizations looking to better connect people to their local rivers. In several states we have worked to advance law and policy to effectively utilize the public right-of-way at bridge crossings to provide river access.
American Whitewater publishes the Navigability Toolkit. For the past 25 years, our legal volunteers have researched the navigability statutes and case law for all 50 states that define the scope of the public’s rights and privileges on the nation’s waterways. By providing this knowledge for both recreationists and land owners we seek to reduce conflicts and support responsible recreational enjoyment of rivers and streams.