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
You are an idiot. Do a little more research in basic Earth science if you really don’t understand the reason for this.
Joe - I assume you’re referring to the author… let’s play nice; not everyone is as learned as you.
LBS said on July 23rd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
There’s an old saying in the West:
Whiskey’s for drinkin’, water’s for fightin’ over!
—-That’s the crux of it. Water has been big business here for a very long time. I’m not sure if “ownership” of water rights is prevalent in other areas or not, but definately a biggie here (Colorado). I do not “own” any of the water or minerals under my property - those rights were sold off ages ago. Most of the mineral rights in my area are owned by the railroads. If I dig a hole out back and find a T-Rex, that’s not mine either. That would fall under the mineral rights. Furthermore, mineral rights include natural gas and yes, the gas company can come out to my property at any time and dig for oil if they decide to. And there’s not a thing I can do about it.
Sorry to vent, but such is life here. Our best solution to the “no rain barrel” thing is greywater, because once I’ve used it, I technically do “own” that.
The law is similar in Australia. Basically, as soon as the rain hits the ground, it is deemed to belong to “the crown”, which in practice means that the government of the day can make decisions about the way to use that water so it provides the most benefits to the community as a whole. In Australia, this is done through a system of licenses that are quite complex, but at their core, define who gets first go at any water that is available, and what your share might be. Here, and I suspect there, the volumes consumed by people domestically are wildly smaller then the volumes used by agriculture, and can readily be shown to have a much higher value, so there is little or no interest in making householders pay a fee for the right to capture and store rainfall for purposes like drinking, washing, watering the lawn and so on.
These sorts of rules are more targeted at stopping farmers higher up in catchments building large on farm dams to capture any run off on their properties, which they can then use to grown some kind of irrigated crop (and make more money). This sounds great, except that the water they captured usually is effectively being taken from an irrigator downstream who has been issued with a water share, or more commonly, taken from some water sensitive piece of the environment.
This is ridiculous, here in Australia the government actually encourages us to put in water tanks and some local councils give rebates to home owners who install tanks.New Homes in New South Wales are actually required to have them and planning approval is not granted without one!
So let me get this straight. We don’t own the water falling onto our property. Therefore, when said water floods basements and cellars, can we sue the OWNERS of the water for damage? Sure, we can…
This is the situation in the UK too. Every drop of rain belongs to the river authority. That is until it floods when miraculously it ceases to be their responsibility
I would demand the state prevent their water from hitting my privately owned roof.
I’m curious what suggestions people have for alternatives to issuing enforceable water rights. If you build a dam on your property and use the water for your own purposes, the farmer or city downstream that depends on that water is left high & dry so to speak. How American of us to jump to figuring out in which situations we should be able to sue someone b/c some gov’t policy has wronged us. But we digress. The issue of small scale, domestic rainwater collection systems is no issue at all - while we do not yet compensate homeowners for these improvements, rainwater collection w/out a water right is perfectly legal (as long as it falls below a daily volume limit - in Oregon = 15,000 gallons/day).
SWEET! I am filling a lawsuit against the government for the water damage to my house that has been caused by the government water sprinkling from the sky onto my house through my leaky roof onto the walls. I can finnaly afford to repair my shack, and so can you!!!