The idiotic thing was that it overturned 150 years of western water law precedence and all of the lower court rulings which consistently held for the original application of water law for permit exempt domestic wells. Additionally the ruling basically put the onus on counties ( and thus on the applicants) to prove ( via some undefined means and method) that their water withdrawal for domestic use did not materially effect senior water rights nor stream inflows. Take a read of the dissenting opinion(s)- it clarifies some of the points that I considered idiotic,
Currently it takes years and tens of thousands of dollars to perform a hydro geological study to determine if inflows or senior water rights could be impacted and frankly, in my considered, civil engineering opinion the studies rely on voodoo science and materially unprovable simulation and assumptions regarding infiltration rates, water migration and subsurface transportation.
I could go on for a long time over all of the scientific flaws in the thinking that underpinned Hirst but you’d be bored to tears. Take a hard look at who was paying the freight for Hilary Franz (one of the plaintiffs attorney- I think the lead attorney). I won’t deny that the original cause for the case was some fast and loose applications of the permit exempt domestic well by some developers in Whatcom-but there was a deeper agenda that drove it to the state Supreme Court.
‘Beneficial Use’ was a term applied by Spokane County to ensure that an applicant trying to grandfather prior to Hirst’s effective date wasn’t gaming the system- it meant you had to be building something with a bathroom with h/c running water and toilet. That then necessitated a septic system ( or sewer hookup) and power.