Water Law (Law No. 276 of 1942)(Costa Rica)

This Law regulates the use of waters of the public and private domain, which are: 1) Those of the territorial seas in the extent and terms established by international law; 2) Those of the lagoons and estuaries of the beaches that communicate permanently or intermittently with the sea; 3) Those of naturally formed inland lakes that are directly linked to constant currents; 4) Those of rivers and their direct or indirect tributaries, streams or springs from the point where the first permanent waters arise until their mouth into the sea or lakes, lagoons or estuaries; 5) Those of constant or intermittent currents whose channel, in all its extension or part of it, serves as a limit to the national territory, and the control of these currents must be subject to what has been established in international treaties concluded with neighboring countries; 6) Those extracted from mines; 7) Those of springs that arise on beaches, maritime areas, channels, basins or banks of national property and, in general, all those that arise on public domain lands; 8) Underground ones whose lighting is not done through wells; 9) Rainwater that flows through ravines or boulevards whose channels are in the public domain. The exception is water that is used under contracts granted by the State, which will be subject to the conditions authorized in the respective concession.