The short title of this chapter is the State Water Control Law. It is the policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the purpose of this law to: (1) protect existing high quality state waters and restore all other state waters to such condition of quality that any such waters will permit all reasonable public uses and will support the propagation and growth of all aquatic life, including game fish, which might reasonably be expected to inhabit them; (2) safeguard the clean waters of the Commonwealth from pollution; (3) prevent any increase in pollution; (4) reduce existing pollution; (5) promote and encourage the reclamation and reuse of wastewater in a manner protective of the environment and public health; and (6) promote water resource conservation, management and distribution, and encourage water consumption reduction in order to provide for the health, safety, and welfare of the present and future citizens of the Commonwealth.
Va. Code Ann. § 62.1-44.2
Short title; purpose
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc. (1987)
Most recently applied in Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc. v. Commonwealth ex rel. Virginia State Water Control Board (July 2015)
Code 1950, § 62.1-14; 1968, c. 659; 1970, c. 638; 1978, c. 827; 2000, c. 972.
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: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.