Subject to existing rights, all natural groundwaters of the state as defined in RCW 90.44.035, also all artificial groundwaters that have been abandoned or forfeited, are hereby declared to be public groundwaters and to belong to the public and to be subject to appropriation for beneficial use under the terms of this chapter and not otherwise.
RCW 90.44.040
Public groundwaters subject to appropriation.
Applied in 15 court decisions — leading case State, Dept. of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn (2002)
Most recently applied in Richard A. Fox And Marnie B. Fox, Apps. v. Skagit County, Res. (April 2016)
1945 c 263 s 4; Rem
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.