Nothing in this chapter contained shall operate to effect an impairment of any inchoate right to divert and use water while the application of the water in question to a beneficial use is being prosecuted with reasonable diligence, having due regard to the circumstances surrounding the enterprise, including the magnitude of the project for putting the water to a beneficial use and the market for the resulting water right for irrigation or power or other beneficial use, in the locality in question.
RCW 90.03.460
Inchoate rights not affected.
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case State, Dept. of Ecology v. Theodoratus (1998)
Most recently applied in 182 Wash. 2d 574 - Cornelius v. Department of Ecology (February 2015)
1917 c 117 s 43; RRS s 7398
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: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.