Upon the filing of a petition with the department by a planning unit or by one or more persons claiming a right to any waters within the state or when, after investigation, in the judgment of the department, the public interest will be served by a determination of the rights thereto, the department shall file a petition to conduct an adjudication with the superior court of the county for the determination of the rights of appropriators of any particular groundwater body and all the provisions of RCW 90.03.110 through 90.03.240 and 90.03.620 through 90.03.645, shall govern and apply to the adjudication and determination of such groundwater body and to the ownership thereof. Hereafter, in any proceedings for the adjudication and determination of water rights—either rights to the use of surface water or to the use of groundwater, or both—pursuant to chapter 90.03 RCW, all appropriators of groundwater or of surface water in the particular basin or area may be included as parties to such adjudication, as set forth in chapter 90.03 RCW.
RCW 90.44.220
Petition to conduct an adjudication to determine rights to water.
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case State, Dept. of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn (2002)
Most recently applied in Foster v. Department of Ecology (October 2015)
2009 c 332 s 17; 1987 c 109 s 119; 1945 c 263 s 17; 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.