16. Department of the Interior · Notable
Issue a secretarial order declaring Alaska's navigable waters state-owned
Printed page 531 16. Department of the Interior
“Issue a secretarial order declaring navigable waters in Alaska to be owned by the state so that the lands beneath these waters belong to Alaska.”
What has happened
- Not started
No secretarial order declaring Alaska's navigable waters state-owned has been issued. Interior's published Secretary's Orders library, read on 2026-08-27, runs to SO 3453 and contains no such order; a grep of the full text of every 2025–2026 order fetched for this research returns no use of the word "navigable"; and no Federal Register document in the window addresses submerged-land title in Alaska. The Alaska land actions in the window went to entitlements and withdrawals instead (#1483, #1484). A Ninth Circuit opinion in United States v. State of Alaska issued 2025-08-20 in the CourtListener corpus shows the question is still being litigated rather than settled by order.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
A specific instrument is named, and it does not exist.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- Secretarial order on ownership of navigable waters in Alaska
- ID
- 1491