HB 144-REPORT ON FISHING STREAM ACCESS  4:57:27 PM CO-CHAIR WAGONER announced HB 144 to be up for consideration [CSHB 144(RES), 27-LS0220\I, was before the committee]. CO-CHAIR PASKVAN moved to bring HB 144 before this committee for purposes of discussion. CO-CHAIR WAGONER objected for discussion purposes. 4:58:25 PM REPRESENTATIVE LES GARA, sponsor of HB 144, testified that people have lost their public access to fishing streams throughout the country. For instance, people can no longer access 180 miles of the Missouri River and in Wyoming and Montana, ranchers and movie stars are famous for being able to close off fishing streams' access to people. Alaskans are lucky, but we're slowly losing fishing stream access, especially along the road system where roughly half of the Salcha River in Fairbanks is thus endangered, along with over one mile of Montana Creek and Willow Creek in the Valley and over one mile of the Anchor River on the Kenai Peninsula. REPRESENTATIVE GARA said when the state owns the land there is access in the smaller rivers where one can wade up to the high water mark, but other big rivers are mostly in wilderness status (nobody has wanted to develop them) and privately owned by Native corporations and other private property owners. And one day they will be developed, which is fine. That is the private property owners' right. But HB 144 asks the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) to say what they have done to maintain and protect public access in the prior year and what their plans are for the next year. The goal is to remind them that they have a duty to promote and maintain public access, and if we are going to start to lose it, it's much cheaper for the state to try and negotiate a voluntary easement purchase before the land is developed rather than after. That is the problem in Missouri, Wyoming and Montana. Once the land has been developed, you can only buy tiny parcels back. In Alaska, before the landowners decide they are going to do something with the land, it would be smart for the state to at least approach the landowner, and the legislature could appropriate whatever funds it thought appropriate, about the public access. If they say yes, easements are wanted to the river and along it and in places where the rivers are too deep to wade. He said this is a simple bill and it maintains the state's heritage of sport and other sorts of fishing and helps in subsistence fishing, too. 5:02:06 PM With time being too short for a lot of testimony, he listed letters of support from the Alaska Fly Fishers, the Outdoor Council, the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, and a number of other individuals. SENATOR STEDMAN said this request is for an annual report and that seemed like a lot of work and asked if it could done every four or five years. REPRESENTATIVE GARA replied that the department already knows where public access is being lost and the report won't change much from year to year unless new access has been successfully accumulated. It takes a long time to negotiate a piece of easement and having an annual requirement will force them to think it through every year. 5:04:18 PM ED FOGELS, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Natural Resources (DNR), said the conservation of public access is a very important part of DNR's obligation and they take it very seriously. Whenever they sell land, they make sure to conserve access to public waters, whether they are streams or lakes; also when they convey land out of state ownership, to municipalities, for instance, they retain easements for public access to public water bodies. This bill wouldn't significantly affect their workflow or workload and it would give the legislature an accounting of what they had accomplished over the year and what they hope to accomplish for the following year. CO-CHAIR WAGONER closed the public hearing. CO-CHAIR PASKVAN moved to bring CSHB 144(RES), version I, before the committee. There were no objections; Co-Chair Wagoner removed his objection. SENATOR WIELECHOWSKI moved to report CSHB 144(RES) from committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal note(s). There were no objections and it was so ordered.