Municipal Water Law Policy Revision

• Document for review: Draft Municipal Water Law Policy (POL-2030)

How to submit comments

This public comment period opens April 22 and closes June 21, 2024. Submit your comments using our online comment form.

When the comment period ends, we will consider all comments and may change the document based on the comments. After considering all comments, we plan to begin working on the final policy update.

Background

Municipal water law governs public water systems, like utilities, to ensure they supply safe and reliable drinking water to the public in a way that is consistent with broader water law. The Legislature passed the Municipal Water Law in 2003 to clearly define municipal water suppliers and help clarify the status of their water rights. Ecology developed a Municipal Water Law Interpretive and Policy Statement, which was last updated in 2012. The goal of this policy and interpretive statement is to explain how Ecology administers municipal water law as it relates to water rights.

Ecology is continuing the process of updating the Municipal Water Law policy (POL-2030) to reflect recent case law, to address issues that are not currently specified in the policy, and to improve transparency. This second Draft revision builds off the changes made, and comments received last summer/fall on the first draft.