It is hereby declared to be the established policy of this State that the right of a municipality to acquire and hold rights to the use of water should be protected to the fullest extent necessary for existing and future uses, but that no municipality shall acquire or hold any right to waste water, or to use water for other than municipal purposes, or to prevent the appropriation and application of water in excess of its reasonable and existing needs to useful purposes by others subject to the rights of the municipality to apply such water to municipal uses as and when necessity therefor exists.
Cal. Water Code § 106.5
General State Policy
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Kern Tulare Water District v. City of Bakersfield, California (1988)
Most recently applied in Kern Tulare Water District v. City of Bakersfield, California (May 1988)
Added by Stats. 1945, Ch. 1344.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.