Who Does Rainwater Belong To?
One of the greatest steps forward that local communities have taken of late is the push to collect rainwater to offset your water use. It is often an easy way to help out the environment and, in the long run, simply save water. There don’t really seem to be any catches to it either. Rain falls from the sky, hits your roof and runs in to your drums or barrels or tanks.
If only it were that simple.
Notch up another one for the members of the Idiots Anonymous who have apparently been camping out in Bellingham, Washington. Apparently, rainwater doesn’t actually belong to individuals, but to the state as a whole. Therefore, all the wonderful efforts of communities to collect water are actually illegal.
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Not just frowned upon, or morally unethical, or shifty – all of which water collection is not – but actually illegal, so much so that in the future such legalities could be used in a court of law.
It comes down once again to the simple fact that humanity is doomed to an ever continuing cycle of idiot and misanthropic events and situations that will, eventually, simply wear down those of us with half a brain, and leave planet Earth populated by half-wits and mimes (often the same thing).
This information is coming to us from the Bellingham Herald, who recently ran a story entitled “Does saving rainwater violate state law?” by Jennifer Langston. “We’re not going to start issuing permits for a pickle barrel in the backyard. But what if it’s four pickle barrels or a system that has 20,000 gallons of storage?” said Brian Walsh, a manager in the Department of Ecology’s water resources program.
Mr. Walsh, manager of the Department of Ecology, who the hell cares if it’s 2 million! It is rainwater you simpleton. It is wet water, falling from the clouds in the sky, on to roof’s and paddocks which may very well be decked out with enough pickle barrels to quench the thirst of a small army, like Canada’s. But unless someone is filling their aforementioned barrel from a river or other form of wet estuary, what right minded individual is going to attempt to enforce this law?
According to Langston, Seattle has obtained a citywide water-right permit, which allows for rain to be collected from most rooftops in the city. The “most” there refers to the few neighborhoods, mostly areas north of 85th street that see their stormwater empty into creeks and streams and lakes.
Just how is this stormwater making its way from Joe Bloggs’ roof and backyard out in to the streets and gutters so that it can then run into whatever lake lies at the end of it. How much rain is already soaked up by the grass that covers many a backyard? Is that grass acting illegally hogging all that water for itself?
If this law is not soon revoked, then my faith in humanity will once again drop another few notches down. And while Washington state lawmakers may not be out to please Joshua S. Hill of Melbourne, Australia, one can at least hope that they are going to try and use at least a modicum of common sense. It’d be a change, sure, but it’s a change for the better!
Update - thanks to cchiovitti who, in the comments below, alerted us to the fact that Eastern Colorado also has similar restrictions on who owns rainwater. Make sure to leave a comment if your state has decided to take a leave of absence from their senses as well.
credit: Pete Baugh at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
I think one other person has mentioned this, but it bears repeating… What happens when rain falls on my roof? It collects, runs off and ends up on the ground, where much of it evaporates, and the rest soaks in. What happens when I save some of that rain water? During the rainy season, a little less evaporates or goes into the ground, then during the dry season I empty out my cistern, and much of it evaporates and the rest goes into the ground. I’m not robbing poor agribiz or some huge desert metroplex of the water they need to live, in fact, all I’m doing is extending the rainy season. And, really, I’m not even doing that since on my property, the area I can collect water from is maybe 5% of the total area. Water collection for local, personal use changes NOTHING. Now, commercial collection for distribution is another matter, but the law ought to be able to distinguish those two cases.
There is a difference between 2 barrels and 20,000 barrels–even in states like Ohio. If you buy up a property and collect vast amounts of rainwater, you’re seriously impacting ground water levels. This could diminish the amount of water, over a period of time, that you have avaialble in your houses’ wells, it could divert water away from rivers, lakes, and streams. More importantly, it could impact wetlands–which act as natural pollution filters and controls for many ecosystems.
The environment is an open community. If you don’t think you have an impact on the world, you’re mistaken.
But hey, ignore what the ECOLOGIST says. Ignore what “ecology” means. +1 for knee-jerk reactions.
What if a citizen demands that the city come get their rain water off their car before it starts to leave water spots?
There’s an old saying in the West:
Whiskey’s for drinkin’, water’s for fightin’ over!
I’ve been thinking about this and I probably should clarify what I mean. No water is destroyed by storing it in a cistern. If you then use that water for local irrigation, all you are doing is changing the timing of when that water hits the ground. Now, there is a separate case (which is not the focus of the article) where some entity collects water, and then transports it elsewhere. This is damaging, as it prevents the water from recharging the local water table. Luckily for us, it is pretty easy to differentiate between these two cases. But, in most cases, the law does not, that’s why these laws are… dumb.
As a fomer Colorado resident who now lives in Washington, I have noticed that rainwater is treated differently in these two regions. In CO, rain is rare; here in WA, we sometimes have more than we know what to do with. Laws against collecting rainwater in CO make a certain amount of sense: five of the nations largest rivers start in the CO Rocky Mountains. If every citizen were to keep his/her rainfall, then the water cycle in the state would be broken and dozens of other states would suffer. This article says that water rights only apply to aquifers and rivers, but one must wonder where that water originates in the first place.
I believe just as much as the next guy in personal liberty, but we must also consider the common good in our governmental decisions. I agree that a wholesale ban is not effective or desireable, but we must find a happy medium.
One more, and then I promise to shut up.
For those of us living in New Mexico, no need to worry, here’s the official position of the state:
“The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer supports the wise and efficient use of the state’s water resources; and, therefore, encourages the harvesting, collection and use of rainwater from residential and commercial roof surfaces for on-site landscape irrigation and other on-site domestic uses.”
http://www.ose.state.nm.us/water-info/conservation/h2o-policy.html
I suggest you read up about the history of water in the West. Here is a little bit of information and history of water rights (talks about Colorado mostly but covers most of the Western US): http://www.waterinfo.org/colorado-water/colorado-water-rights
There’s an old saying here, that “Whiskey is for drinking, and water’s for fighting over.”
Ah, government. How necessary thou art in our lives.
No need to tear all your hair out… yet. In Oregon (and I think WA as well), certain uses are exempt from the need for a water right. Included in the list of exempt uses is a volumetric (15,000 gal/day) limit for domestic uses such as lawn watering and drinking water. Small scale rainwater collection systems would fall under this provision. Any rainwater collection system in excess of this would certainly be a sight to behold and probably should be regulated in the public realm (which does own the water), as water is a scarce and precious resource. While the notion that conservation minded individuals are being discouraged from sustainability improvements is disturbing, I do not think that WA Dep’t of Ecology will be writing any tickets for individuals implementing environmentally conscious water usage improvements.