It is hereby declared that all water within the state is the property of the people of the state, but the right to the use of water may be acquired by appropriation as provided by law.
S.D. Codified Laws § 46-1-3
Water as property of people--Appropriation of right to use
Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case Matter of SD Water Mgmt. Bd. (1984)
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 (2); SL 1983, ch 314, § 1.
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.