Quantifying Water Rights in General Stream Adjudications

Throughout the West , a number of administrative, state and federal tribunals are immersed in massive property disputes, known as general stream adjudications, to determine rights to use water from a given source. These cases are often contentious and lengthy. Particularly difficult adjudications or those with a vast number of claimants can take decades. Adjudications are important to many western communities as water underlies economic development, bears cultural importance and also impacts ecosystems. As a judicial officer presiding over Washington state’s Yakima River basin adjudication, people often ask me what a stream adjudication is and why they last so long. Adjudications serve to quantify all rights to use water from a specific source. Each entity claiming a right must present evidence in support. Valid rights are quantified and invalid rights eliminated. As a result, stream adjudications provide an overall inventory of how much water is used and the relative seniority of those rights. This article examines the process, goal, and concomitant issues that arise in performing this inventory.