Cal. WAT § 31144.2

This is the official text of Cal. WAT § 31144.2, part of California’s Water Code — governs water rights and water resource management.

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Official statutory text

(a) Violation of any of the provisions of a district regulation adopted pursuant to Section 31144 may be abated as a public nuisance by the district, and the board of directors may by regulation establish a procedure for the abatement of such a nuisance and to assess the cost of abatement to the violator. If the violator maintains the nuisance upon real property in which the violator has a fee title interest, the assessment shall constitute a lien upon the real property.

(b) The amount of any costs incurred by the district in abating such a nuisance upon real property shall be added to the annual taxes next levied upon the real property subject to abatement and shall constitute a lien upon that real property as of the same time and in the same manner as does the tax lien securing those annual taxes. All laws applicable to the levy, collection, and enforcement of district taxes shall be applicable to the assessment, except that if any real property to which the lien would attach has been transferred or conveyed to a bona fide purchaser for value, or if a lien of a bona fide encumbrancer for value has been created and attached thereon, prior to the date on which the first installment of those taxes would become delinquent, then a lien which would otherwise be imposed by this section shall not attach to the real property and the delinquent and unpaid charges relating to the property shall be transferred to the unsecured roll for collection. Any amounts of those assessments collected are to be credited to the funds of the district from which the costs of abatement were expended.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.