Justin Raymond
Professor Chris Bigelow
English 1010
October 15, 2014
Summary & Response to “The Public Right to Float through Private Property in Utah”
The article “The Public Right to Float through Private Property in Utah: Conatser V.
Johnson” by John Mukum Mbaku is a complete report on the Conatser’s V. Johnson case. The
article also goes into detail about the laws that have been reformed to ensure that the public have
rights to navigate a waterway even its it goes through someone else’s private property. This
debate started when the Conatser’s were floating down the Weber River in Utah. They got out of
their boats to wade in the water, fish, and remove a fence that was across the river, but never
touched dry land. The local law enforcement later arrested the Conatser’s for trespassing and for
removing the fence that was actually the Johnson’s private property. The Conaster’s fought the
trespassing citations because by only touching the riverbed and not the Johnson’s land, they were
not doing anything illegal as it states in the 17th Article of Utah’s Constitution. During the case
they were also trying to fight the citation they got for removing the fence that was across the
river. Stating that it was placed illegally and was a hazard to the people that float down the river.
The case in which the Conatser’s made, was to help future recreational users have the right to use
the waterways as they please, by saying that the waterways and stream beds were there for the
public to use. After this effort to reform the law, landowners were upset because it opened up the
privacy to the property to anyone. This prompted landowners to appeal the newly reformed law,
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they wanted to prevent people floating down the river from touching or turning their boats
upstream while floating through the landowners property.
Through the contrasting opinions of Johnson and Consater, John Mukum Mbaku
logically points out a valid, unbiased critique that doesn’t benefit nor hurt any of the parties of
the case.
For me, as a whitewater kayaker, this article doesn’t try to stop the public from using the
publicly owned waterway. The article John Mukum Mbaku wrote is a full detailed report on what
has happened and his opinion on the Conatser versus Johnson case. John Mbaku stays
completely neutral on his stance in regards to the public rights to float down the river. While not
completely against the case, John points out a few of the flaws the Conatsers made against the
Johnsons. As he mentioned here on his critique of the matter, “Despite the fact that the Conatser
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