Colorado passes law to allow rainwater harvesting
Holstrom's violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her husband maintain.But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those waterways.
But the NY Times reports that Colorado passed a couple of laws to make this practice legal.
A study in 2007 proved crucial to convincing Colorado lawmakers that rain catching would not rob water owners of their rights. It found that in an average year, 97 percent of the precipitation that fell in Douglas County, near Denver, never got anywhere near a stream. The water evaporated or was used by plants.It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in ColoradoBut the deeper questions about rain are what really gnawed at rain harvesters like Todd S. Anderson, a small-scale farmer just east of Durango. Mr. Anderson said catching rain was not just thrifty — he is so water conscious that he has not washed his truck in five years — but also morally correct because it used water that would otherwise be pumped from the ground.
the latest
latest episodes
I've never understood how making it illegal to collect rainwater makes any sense at all!
@ igpajo:
It kind of makes sense if you imagine someone who owns a large amount of land effectively cutting off the water supply for any area that normally depends on their runoff. But the law as applied was hurting far more people than it helped.
I don't know if this applies to Colorado or not, but in Manitoba collected rain water makes an excellent breeding ground for mosquitoes and West Nile Virus is still a concern.
Back when West Nile was in the papers the city of Winnipeg sprayed over peoples properties regardless of if they wanted pesticides on their properties or not.
I can understand a government wanting to control collected rain water to help prevent the spread of West Nile, but to say you can't collect rain water because you don't own it seems rather silly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9-VfuOoI4
@PAUL567 - If done right and with the proper equipment, mosquitoes are of no concern. The barrel should be covered and the water coming in is filtered by a new to keep out other debris.
Eastern US states generally have riparian law, which recognizes water as a natural commons that is administrated by the state and owned by no one.
Western US states generally use prior appropriation law, which recognizes that water has tremendous value in dry territories and allows those persons who historically seized the water by theft and slaughter to prevent later immigrants from doing the same.
Riparian law sounds better until you find out that the whole system's been perverted by polluting industries; in the original, British Common Law formulation one was not permitted to substantially harm or consume the water. Industries were to spin their mill wheels with it and give it back in drinkable form, and tanneries that poisoned the water were to be fined or shut down. But it didn't take long before the City Fathers and the Captains of Industry started pumping sewage into the waters upstream of the poor, and gave themselves legal right to do so.
It's not quite legal for everyone here in CO yet. Unless the law has changed dramatically since the last time I saw it, people are only allowed to collect rainwater if they're not on a municipal water system. For the majority of the population, harvesting rainwater is still against the law.
So if you're in Utah (where this is still illegal) if it rains and your roof becomes damaged or leaks... would you then be able to sue the people who own the downstream water rights for damages ?
#3, regarding mosquitoes, nearly all commerical rainwater barrels I have seen have lids to prevent mosquitoes from entering or breeding. A flexible pipe runs straight from the gutter to the sealed barrel. This also prevents wildlife and small children from falling inside and being unable to get out.
If someone was using a home-made rainwater barrel, like a trash can or an old wooden whiskey barrel, then, yes mosquitoes could be a problem. I'm told putting a drop of dish detergent will prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs; I think it disrupts the surface tension, while being diluted enough not to harm plants or animals. I've also heard of people putting a few minnows or hardy goldfish in an open-topped rainwater barrel to control mosquitoes.
It's way overtime that they changed this law, it was truly absurd, and a symbol for the commoditization of all elements of the natural world.
@jonathan_v
The people downstream would have a better case that you were collecting their water in your living room.
The history is pretty simple. A lot of people moved out here in the 1850's. They would set up either a mine or farm. Then, someone else would move in upstream and divert all the water they were previously using. Tended to kill off small farms or mining operations. They would even divert municipal water supplies.
So, they introduced a concept called first-use. If water was flowing past a point and the person who owned that point did not use it, but the person next downstream did, then the person downstream gained those water rights.
So, whether you had a small farm of 10 acres or one of millions of acres, if you had first claim to the water, no one could deprive you of it legally later.
There is a far greater demand for water than access to water and they needed to come up with a system to manage it. Simple as that. And, those little houses in the suburbs were not first. Not even close to it. Its not a symbol for anything. It is its own thing.
woot! Durango made BoingBoing! (sorta).
In town most people are on muni water. Out here in the sticks, most are on cistern watern (ie, dude in a truck delivers it). Not that the rainwater collection law would have been enforced, but it's nice to have it legal now.
What I did was plant my gardens in small beds underneath the roofline of my house. Instant runoff. Since I dig the beds down to the clay and line with large river rocks, the soil inside holds the water great.
Plus its been doing nothing BUT raining this year so far..
So they can collect the rain that falls on their roof tax free?
I was always a fan of the way houses in Bermuda paint their roofs with special (lime-based?) paint, the channel the water into an open tank under the house (basement)...
You'll find that there is a 50 gallon limit on the size of barrel. And, only on specific properties supplied by a specific type of well.
ie, no suburbs. No municipal water users.
@Dewynken
Way to show your Demon pride.
Unfortunately, Durango made it to BoingBoing back in 2005:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/04/woman-sues-teenage-g.html
"according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground..."
but instead she was using rain barrels "to irrigate the small vegetable garden..."
Wasn't she basically just time-shifting the rain?
Besides the obvious oh-come-on factor, that's what got me when this story first popped up: it wasn't as if she was shipping her rainwater to Nevada or anything, she just wanted to save some to put on the plants between rains.
@w000t
The way water rights work out here is pretty complicated. It is based on first use.
Let's say property A has the rights to 5 acre feet of water.
Property B has rights to 10 acre feet.
Property C has rights to 20 acre feet
Property D has 5 acre feet.
Then, it works down the line. Municipal Water users have no real limit on water usage, but it is metered and billed. And, municipal water is never allowed to drop below a certain amount.
So, Property A gets to fill in its storage system to the full amount, then Property B, then C, then D, etc.
Which works fine, except..
In a dry year, there might not be enough water to fill all those requests. A gets its allotment. Then B. But, C, and D do not. Municipal always gets it allotment and gets increasing priority in dry seasons.
Now, during the rainy part of the year, the water would be runoff that could get allocated to C or D, but its not there. 1 50 gallon barrel does not make a difference, but 1000 does matter. In the quote you include, the key word is "barrels" which means more than 50 gallons. 4 barrel could easily be 200 gallons not available to the ones with rights. Multiply that by 1000 homes and it is significant.
If the person you quote is using municipal water, she could get that water by turning on the spigot, but Property C and D don't have that option. They can only pull water from public storage systems. Get enough people storing water and there simply won't be enough runoff to meet demand and most of the people doing the diversion would still have access to the same amount of water whether they have barrels, or not.
Basically.. rainbarrels are just a nice thing for most people to have to make themselves feel good, but it makes zero impact on themselves whether they have access to water, or not. It does potentially affect others.
I wonder how the new law will interact with the Federal water rights "treaties" between the states out west. If most rainwater runoff fails to make it into streams as stated in the article, it should stand up.
These water rights questions seem simple at first glance, but become very complicated as you look at all the upstream and downstream ramifications.
Many municipalities pay for sewage treatment based on water used, hence many cities are basically forcing you to buy their water in order to pay for the sewage treatment. In addition systems that combine sewage and precipitation run-off into one pipe rely on the dilution for their treatment plants to function.
All that aside, residents should be allowed to utilize some reasonable amount of precipitation to support personal food production as a matter of national security.
(chuckling, but serious)
Basically.. rainbarrels are just a nice thing for most people to have to make themselves feel good, but it makes zero impact on themselves whether they have access to water, or not. It does potentially affect others.
The study cited in the article suggests it really doesn't.
This is just ridiculous, Nineteenth-century, cattle herding, thinking. The state of Colorado receives nearly six trillion gallons of rain across the state annually, on average. That's roughly 1.2 million gallons per person, per year. Household water use in most western states is based on an annual consumption of roughly one-quarter of an acre foot of water per year or about 81,500 gallons. That is roughly one-fifteenth the amount of annual rainfall, per person, across the whole state. So, you tell me how -when maybe ten percent, at the most, of the population has four fifty gallon rain barrels in their backyards- these people are going to make an impact on the amount of water available to the rest of the non-rainwater collecting residents of the state?
Ahh you are right. As crazy as the 2005 incident was, any week the police logs show something crazier. Durango is a kickass place. Don't move here.
If water nazis want to do something useful, they should ban the overhead water sprayers.
You Americans and your funny laws. You know, in some countries, it's required to have a rain water tank installed.
Building Advisory Notice 09/06 Mandatory plumbed rainwater tanks for Class 1 building
And the government pays you to install it.
Falcon_Seven calculated:
That may be true, but it tends to fall in the most inconvienient places...
If we built a wall around Colorado, how long would it take to flood the entire state?
Also, why isn't this person being fined for their plants usage. I mean his/her grass is absorbing some of the rain through its roots. They should have to rip up any and all plants on their property since they are absorbing precious water that can't make it into the waterway, damned thief.
This state ownership of rain is insane. Following the only (silly) logical conclusion, if I can prove that the cloud formed over my house in Washington state and dumped it's load over Colorado, then the state of Colorado owes me money, lots of it. Now that's what I call downstream. It's the theory of inception. It was born here, it's mine. Think I'll invent a cloud tagging system and hire some lawyers. There's some big money to be had.
I'm assuming the law was originally meant to prevent rain farming, has that ever been dealt with in fiction?
Uhm yeah, I haven't washed my car in years too, and I now I know it was because I am extremely water thrifty!
This is so contrary to to the basic needs for survival that it makes me Ill. What is next... we are not allowed to breathe the air that flows through our house? We need to realize what is bestowed upon us by the creator is not to be taken away from us by laws that benefit the powerful few.
T...
#26,
I am in Melbourne. I have a small 700 litre tank. I want to get a 10000 litre tank before water prices rise any more.
I am pretty sure that water tanks were illegal in Melbourne until about five minutes before the water tank subsidy was announced. If you have a farm it is definitely not legal to collect all the water which falls on your land.
Hmmm... Ask Australians, in particular Melburnians, about this. It just doesn't rain on us much any more and water has become incredibly precious. So we're all encouraged to save water in every possible way. But...households save so much water that the vegetable growers who use recycled grey water to grow the food for the city don't get enough water any more.
I think it will come to the stage where we will all collect water in tanks - most do - but will be taxed for the volume of tanks we have. After all, the water that we collect on our property doesn't go anywhere else.
It's a complex question and we're facing it already.
#31,
Storm water in Melbourne goes straight to the ocean. Nowhere else. I don't see why you would tax tanks, unless you are worried about missing runoff in the ocean.
What is the recycled grey water you speak of? I don't see how households saving water would cost them anything. A school near me has water tanks which are filled by a tanker. I don't know where the water comes from but it could easily be water which used to go to growers.
Many cities, including Adelaide have bigger water problems than Melbourne.
#21
If you're referring to the percentage of water run-off, you might consider that the county they did the study in a urban with a lot of suburbs with nice green lawns covered in bluegrass. Bluegrass requires about 36 inches of water per year. Colorado gets about 15. Of course there is a lot less runoff now. That area uses municipal water and will have access to water whether they have rainbarrels or not.
Why does this situation remind me of Gandhi making salt?
To make it illegal and even punishable by law to collect rain water is counterintuitive at best.
At worst it means that you are being denied the second most basic foundation your organism needs to survive. Air being the first.
You can survive without air for a couple of minutes.
You can survive without water for a couple of days
You can survive without food for some weeks.
How would you react to $entity denying you air? If you had the time?
Exactly, that's how.
http://www1m.mesh.ne.jp/~apec-ngo/english/water/2002_speech_Pablo_Solon.htm
What's actually dumber about Colorado water law is the single use provision, which makes gray water systems illegal.
I can use water to shower, cook, clean but I can't reuse that water before sending it into the sewer system.
Why in the world am I forced to reuse pristine water to flush the toilet? Why can't I reuse my shower, laundry, dishwasher water for that purpose?
In a state where most of our water is surface water (particularly here in Boulder)and my June bill for 7000 gallons out of my allowed 20,000 gallon water budget was $50 (over half of which was wastewater and flood charges, the actual water usage charge was $14.42) it's ludicrous to not be allowed to reuse the water.
MYDOG said:
To which Michael Smith asked:
If households are using less water, it follows that there would be less water heading "downstream" to the farmers for their use. Simply put, a 30% reduction in water useage in the cities would likely result in a 30% drop in grey water available for use by farmers.
In my mind this is quite simple. If your water is so valuable to you, then keep it off my roof. If you can't or won't keep it off my roof, then i'm taking it.
Rain water harvesting can be one of the solutions for water scarce regions. Collecting rain water in barrels and using it in the garden or for flushing toilets can save you gallons of water a day. Other means of water conservation also need to be considered, like recycling water, checking for leaks in the plumbing, taking shorter showers etc. Some more tips on water conservation can be found at http://bit.ly/mOk93
Just do it if you want to. The law makes no sense and you will be hurting no one. This really can't be enforced unless it is obviously done on a large scale. It is so easy to design your site to not allow any runoff - there is no need for cisterns or barrels - store the water in the ground wher it can be used to grow food-bearing trees that shade your house and provide habitat.