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S.D. Codified Laws § 46A-10A-20

Legal controls for drainage management--Right to continue existing drainage

Applied in 8 court decisions — leading case Knodel v. Kassel Township (1998)

Most recently applied in Hostler v. Davison County Drainage Commission (May 2022)

Source: SL 1985, ch 362, § 20.

How often courts cite this section

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citing decisions per year

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 controls instituted by a board may include specific ordinances, resolutions, orders, regulations, or other such legal controls pertaining to other elements incorporated in a drainage plan, project, or area or establishing standards and procedures to be employed toward drainage management. Any such ordinances, resolutions, regulations, or controls shall embody the basic principle that any rural land which drains onto other rural land has a right to continue such drainage if:

(1) The land receiving the drainage remains rural in character;

(2) The land being drained is used in a reasonable manner;

(3) The drainage creates no unreasonable hardship or injury to the owner of the land receiving the drainage;

(4) The drainage is natural and occurs by means of a natural water course or established water course;

(5) The owner of the land being drained does not substantially alter on a permanent basis the course of flow, the amount of flow, or the time of flow from that which would occur; and

(6) No other feasible alternative drainage system is available that will produce less harm without substantially greater cost to the owner of the land being drained.

Such provisions do not necessarily apply within municipalities, but if a municipality drains water onto rural lands lying outside the boundaries of the municipality, the municipality is subject to the above provisions, if adopted by the board.

Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.