Learn About Water Rights

You can drink it, bathe in it, grow gardens and crops with it, you can create electricity with it, cook and play in it, and around seventy two percent of your body is made up from it.  Water, often taken for granted by most, is a highly sought after commodity in various market forms. Unlike other commodities however, water is unique.  Its elements and characteristics as a public resource present special challenges to a free market system. 

In Idaho, the water belongs to the people. The Idaho Constitution declares the use of all waters within the state a “Public Use” subject to regulation. A person or entity does not own water. Instead, the State holds this resource in trust and regulates it for beneficial use in the public’s interest. What can be owned is the right to use it in a manner prescribed by a decree. 

Historically, to perfect a right in water, one only had to “appropriate” the water by method of diversion from its natural stream and apply it to some beneficial use. The gold miners of the latter 19th century applied the same rules to their water appropriations as had been the practice for land.  He who arrived first… wins, in other words, “first in time, first in right.”   Today, the state requires a permitting process involving an application. If successful, an applicant may be issued a license and eventually a decreed right. A party must show he has or can place the water to beneficial use, in a manner that is in the local public interest, and causes no injury to existing rights.   Absent moratorium, there is no cost.  This valuable resource is virtually free to use minus the inconsequential administrative fees charged by the state. 

:: Click to learn about: ELEMENTS OF A WATER RIGHT ::

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