Any person entitled to divert or withdraw waters of the state through any appropriation authorized by enactments of the legislature prior to enactment of chapter 117, Laws of 1917, or by custom, or by general adjudication, who abandons the same, or who voluntarily fails, without sufficient cause, to beneficially use all or any part of said right to divert or withdraw for any period of five successive years after July 1, 1967, shall relinquish such right or portion thereof, and said right or portion thereof shall revert to the state, and the waters affected by said right shall become available for appropriation in accordance with RCW 90.03.250.
RCW 90.14.160
Relinquishment of right for abandonment or failure to beneficially use without sufficient cause—Prior rights acquired through appropriation, custom or general adjudication.
Applied in 18 court decisions — leading case State, Dept. of Ecology v. Theodoratus (1998)
Most recently applied in Crown West Realty, LLC v. Pollution Control Hearings Bd. (February 2019)
1981 c 291 s 1; 1979 ex.s. c 216 s 5; 1967 c 233 s 16.
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.