Since the early 1970’s, the National Park Service has necessarily limited recreational use of the Colorado River corridor within Grand Canyon National Park. This is done to protect the resource from harm and to ensure a high quality visitor experience. To accomplish this, the NPS employs a “user-day” regulatory system. One person on the river for a day equals one user-day. The NPS has fixed the current Colorado River recreational user-day allotment at 169,950 user-days, and divided this total between two user groups.

Those who depend on or desire the services of a licensed river outfitter are referred to as professionally-outfitted or commercial boaters. Those who run their own trips are known as self-outfitted, non-commercial, or private boaters. The current allocation ratio is 115,500 user-days (68%) commercial and 54,450 user-days (32%) non-commercial.

Demand for both professionally-outfitted and self-outfitted Grand Canyon river trips exceeds the available supply. In wanting more use for themselves, private boaters are lobbying the NPS to reallocate use from the professionally-outfitted sector to the non-commercial sector. GCRRA opposes such a reallocation or a reduction of professionally-outfitted use because we do not believe it is justified.

GCRRA’s goal is to give voice to those who fall within the professionally-outfitted or commercial user sector, which we believe constitutes the vast majority of those wishing to visit the Grand Canyon by river.

A central theme of private boater advocates is to suggest that those capable of rowing their own boat through the Grand Canyon are more deserving of the limited access than those who depend on river service providers. GCRRA rejects this notion. The Grand Canyon belongs to all of us, regardless of our whitewater skills.

Most Americans will visit the Grand Canyon by river only once or twice in their lives and must utilize the services of one of the NPS river concessioners to accomplish their trip. We believe that this resource must not be turned over to a much smaller group of recreational boaters at the expense of most Americans and international visitors.

The NPS user-day system has been controversial since its inception. In 1979, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in responding to multiple lawsuits filed by private boater and wilderness advocates against the NPS when it first implemented the user-day system in the early 1970's, ruled that the NPS had in fact acted within its authority when it first rationed and allocated use of the river, as a means of satisfying resource protection and visitor experience quality imperatives. The Court wrote, in part:

Throughout these proceedings, [Plaintiff] has persisted in viewing the dispute as one between the recreational users of the river and the commercial operators, whose use is for profit. [Plaintiff] asserts that by giving a firm allocation to the commercial operators to the disadvantage of those who wish to run the river on their own the Service is commercializing the park. The [Plaintiff] ignores the fact that the commercial operators, as concessioners of the Service, undertake a public function to provide services the NPS deems desirable for those visiting the area. The basic face-off is not between the commercial operators and the noncommercial users, but between those who can make the run without professional assistance and those who cannot. [emphasis added]

It has been twenty-five years, and private boater advocates continue to attempt to ignore and obfuscate the reason that the NPS river concessioners exist, which is to serve and provide the means for most visitors to share in the very special Grand Canyon river experience. GCRRA’s goal is to point out loud and clear that, as the Court stated in 1979, the Grand Canyon river user-day allocation issue is about how the NPS can best balance the needs of both professionally-outfitted and self-outfitted Grand Canyon river runners.

Much is made by private boater advocates of the poorly functioning “Wait List” private river trip permit system. GCRRA agrees that this system is badly broken and in need of comprehensive reform. We believe that a new permitting system modeled on the successful lottery-based systems used on the other major recreational rivers of the American West should be considered for implementation at the Grand Canyon.

Any new private permit system for the Grand Canyon should ensure that non-commercial trips remain non-commercial. It should be simple, practical and easy to use. It should provide equality of opportunity, and be straightforward and efficient for the NPS to administer in a cost-effective way. Most importantly, the private river trip permit application process should begin anew each year.

For an in-depth, historical look at the Grand Canyon recreational user-day allocation issue, please go here.