HB 1338-S - DIGEST

(SUBSTITUTED FOR - SEE 2ND SUB)

Finds that the legislature has provided numerous means and considerable guidance to its communities regarding their growth and for providing essential services within them as they grow. While the legislature recognizes that the totality of the statutory law that governs such communities is found in a wide variety of places throughout the codified version of the statute laws, the Revised Code of Washington, the legislature also recognizes that it has not always expressly announced in the portion of those statutes generally referred to as the state's water laws how the nature of water rights held by municipal water suppliers accommodates the growth of and changes in communities and the requirements placed on them and authorities granted to them by other laws.

Finds that this is in part because state policies in the administration of the water laws have reflected the dynamic nature of human habitation and population growth from within and from without the state. For a very long time, these policies recognized that a water right for municipal water supply purposes is "perfected" when facilities for diverting or withdrawing and distributing the water are constructed but before all of the water is placed to actual use within the community or communities served.

Declares that, with the enactment of this legislation, the legislature intends to provide within the water laws a curative clarification of the relationship of water rights for municipal water supply purposes to the requirements of other law and the realities of growth.