Adjudication

The purpose of a water right adjudication is to catalog and confirm through the court all water rights and to which property those water rights belong, binding all property owners and parties to the court decree of those water rights.

The mission of the IDWR Adjudication Section is to determine the water rights accurately in the Snake River Basin Adjudication and the Northern Idaho Adjudication.

Snake River Basin Adjudication (SRBA)

A massive administrative and legal process began in 1987 designed to sort out more than 150,000 individual claims for water rights in the Snake River Basin area. Over 133,000 of those claims have been determined and decreed by the SRBA Court.

Northern Idaho Adjudication (NIA)

Discovering the value of certainty in water right decrees, the State instructed IDWR to move forward with an administrative and legal process to determine the water rights in Idaho's panhandle in three separate adjudications, creating the Northern Idaho Adjudciation. The district court ordered on November 12, 2008, the commencement of an adjudication in the Coeur d'Alene Spokane River water system that includes the sole source supply of the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.

Adjudication Contact Information

If your question concerns a specific claim, we will need to know the following information:

• The SRBA Claim Number
• Your Name, Address and Telephone Number
• Your Email Address

Adjudication Staff - Our Adjudication Staff is available to help you from one of our four locations.