It is hereby declared that the people of the state have a paramount interest in the use of all the water of the state and that the state shall determine what water of the state, surface and underground, can be converted to public use or controlled for public protection.
S.D. Codified Laws § 46-1-1
Use of water of state--Paramount interest of people--Conversion to public use
Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case Parks v. Cooper (2004)
Most recently applied in McCook Lake Recreation Area v. Dakota Bay, LLC (September 2025)
Source: SL 1955, ch 430, § 1; SDC Supp 1960, § 61.0101 (3).
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: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.