The verification of existing lawful water use is a requirement of the National Water Act, Act 36 of 1998. It enables the transition of water use entitlements from the previous Water Act of 1956. The process also quantifies the extent of current water use for catchment management purposes and to specifically identify unauthorised water use. This project compiled water use information for more than 12 000 properties in the Inkomati Water Management area and determined water use entitlements for around 5 200 properties. Water uses considered for this project were: abstraction for irrigation, industry and municipal use, water storage and stream flow reduction activity as a result of commercial forestry.