The legislative assembly of North Dakota recognizes and declares that the general welfare and the protection of the lives, health, property, and the rights of all people of this state require that the management, conservation, protection, development, and control of waters in this state, navigable or non-navigable, surface or subsurface, the control of floods, the prevention of damage to property therefrom, involve and necessitate the exercise of the sovereign powers of this state and are affected with and concern a public purpose. To realize these objectives it is hereby declared to be the policy of the state to provide for the management, conservation, protection, development, and control of water resources and for the prevention of flood damage in the watersheds of this state and thereby to protect and promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the people of this state.
The legislative assembly further recognizes the significant achievements that have been made in the management, conservation, protection, development, and control of our water and related land resources, and declares that the most efficient and economical method of accelerating these achievements is to establish water resource districts encompassing all of the geographic area of the state, and emphasizing hydrologic boundaries.
N.D.C.C. § 61-16.1-01