the rain might not belong to you

At first I thought it was a good idea. I never imag­ined that in some com­mu­ni­ties it would be prohibited.

bogwater

Dur­ing some of the recent rains I put some lit­tle buck­ets to catch rain­wa­ter that had drained off the roof. In this part of the state you can hardly ever have too much water, and good-quality water is extra-valuable.

drosera-marston-dragon

drosera-capensis-red-form

One of my water-use indul­gences is an exper­i­men­tal lit­tle bog gar­den with car­niv­o­rous plants. Tap water here has four times the dis­solved solids usu­ally rec­om­mended for these swamp-dwellers, so in warmer weather they get five gal­lons a week of reverse osmo­sis water from the local water store. Col­lect­ing fresh rain­wa­ter seemed like a much more sus­tain­able alternative.

Left: Drosera Marston Dragon.
Right: Drosera capen­sis, red form, with deer­fly snack.

Yesterday’s LA Times had an arti­cle on res­i­dents in some of the dry­land Four Cor­ners states who were find­ing out that col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter was actu­ally ille­gal in their com­mu­ni­ties. Because of a com­plex patch­work of water rights agree­ments, many home­own­ers actu­ally don’t own the rain­wa­ter that falls on their houses.

Here’s a quick snip­pet from the article:

“If you try to col­lect rain­wa­ter, well, that water really belongs to some­one else,” said Doug Kem­per, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Col­orado Water Con­gress… Frank Jaeger of the Parker Water and San­i­ta­tion Dis­trict, on the arid foothills south of Den­ver, sees water har­vest­ing as an insid­i­ous attempt to take water from enti­ties that have paid dearly for the resource. “Every drop of water that comes down keeps the ground wet and helps the flow of the river,” Jaeger said. He scoffs at argu­ments that har­vesters like Hol­strom only take a few drops from rivers. “Every­thing always starts with one lit­tle bite at a time.”

I have a healthy respect for the rule of rea­son­able laws, but these seemed way beyond the pale. Like, are they wor­ried these peo­ple are going to bot­tle the rain­wa­ter and sell it to us in South­ern California?

Here within view of the Pacific Ocean, any water not retained in the ground would just wash down the storm drains and slide out into the bay. I doubt we have the same sorts of rules. But for many folks in Utah or Col­orado who are try­ing to grow their own veg­gies, doing what they can to reduce become more self-sustaining and reduce their foot­print on the earth, things aren’t so easy.

What do you think? Should the rain­wa­ter belong to all of us?

March 19 2009 08:20 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • •

10 Responses to “the rain might not belong to you”

  1. Blue Fox on 19 Mar 2009 at 8:48 am #

    What’s next? A tax on the air that you breathe? Scary, isn’t it, when things you take for granted are sud­denly coveted.

  2. Town Mouse on 19 Mar 2009 at 9:25 am #

    My gut reac­tion is if I get to col­lect the sun on my solar, I should also get to col­lect the rain on my roof ;->

  3. out of doors on 19 Mar 2009 at 1:47 pm #

    I think you hit on it exactly when you men­tioned bot­tling rain­wa­ter and sell­ing it out of state. Seems to me that water cached for irri­ga­tion use on prop­erty is doing the same thing it would nat­u­rally, recharg­ing ground­wa­ter and streams along the nat­ural course, just with a slightly dif­fer­ent time­frame. I could see how you would start get­ting into water issues though when you talk about devel­op­ment and large cis­terns that would fun­nel water into a sewage sys­tem as opposed to the sur­round­ing ground. Bet we see a lot more of this kind of thing cov­ered in the media as what was pre­vi­ously con­sid­ered alter­na­tive liv­ing becomes the norm.

  4. susan (garden-chick) on 19 Mar 2009 at 5:59 pm #

    I’ve recently read the same thing about col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter being ille­gal in some com­mu­ni­ties. I can under­stand if some large scale oper­a­tion is divert­ing run-off that feeds reser­voirs, but the aver­age home gar­dener? Oh please. It seems par­tic­u­larly shock­ing to peo­ple in Cal­i­for­nia nad other states that have huge issues with run-off pol­lut­ing oceans and rivers. Amaz­ing that while some com­mu­ni­ties are pass­ing leg­is­la­tion to require storm water to remain on site, oth­ers are doing the opposite.

  5. Helen/patientgardener on 20 Mar 2009 at 4:24 am #

    Well the world is defi­nately going mad. I can under­stand not tak­ing river water but really how can col­lect­ing rain water affect any­one else

  6. lostlandscape on 20 Mar 2009 at 9:51 am #

    The orig­i­nal arti­cle cited an inter­est­ing sta­tis­tic that of the water that falls in a loca­tion only 3% ever makes it into a river or stream, with the remain­ing amount stay­ing on-site–which I’d assume means what­ever doesn’t go back into the atmos­phere would still con­tinue to charge the ground water. I don’t know that peo­ple are being dragged into court over this, but clearly they’re being denied mak­ing mean­ing­ful changes to build­ing prac­tices that might make the world a greener place.

  7. Greg on 22 Mar 2009 at 5:47 am #

    Ahhh, the first glim­mer of the Great Water Wars of the Future.

    Damn. Col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter ille­gal? The most ridicu­lous thing I ever heard, at least as it applies to your typ­i­cal home gardener.

  8. mss @ Zanthan Gardens on 22 Mar 2009 at 7:34 pm #

    I remem­ber first hear­ing about this from a cou­ple from St. George, Utah who I’d met on a camp­ing trip. I’d assumed that rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing would be an impor­tant part of water con­ser­va­tion in the west­ern states and was shocked to be told it was ille­gal where they live.

    Access to potable water around the world is a crit­i­cal issue for bil­lions of peo­ple. We must all pro­tect this pre­cious resource and our right to it.

  9. lostlandscape on 22 Mar 2009 at 8:19 pm #

    Greg, I agree that on the scale of a home the laws are pretty daffy, par­tic­u­larly when they pre­vent a per­son from get­ting per­mits to incor­po­rate more sus­tain­able details into their plan­ning. Recy­cling water is another area where it’s hard to do within the laws as they exist now. Things are chang­ing, but not fast enough to make a dif­fer­ence in how we con­sider water.

    MSS, I’ve heard of peo­ple liv­ing in areas as arid as low­land Ari­zona who har­vest their rain­wa­ter and end up with enough for an entire year. It’s odd that the laws are on the books in some of the areas where res­i­dents would ben­e­fit most.

  10. James Golden on 12 Apr 2009 at 5:22 am #

    I would think you “own” (to the extent own­er­ship of parts of the nat­ural world pre­vails) water falling on your land. But the sit­u­a­tion in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and most of the west is dif­fi­cult, where we have built cities and com­mu­ni­ties in a water-scarce part of the world — in places where they really shouldn’t be in a totally ratio­nal world. (Not to say there is any such thing as a totally ratio­nal world.) Does this change what is appro­pri­ate and inap­pro­pri­ate, right and wrong? I’m not sug­gest­ing per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity for the water sit­u­a­tion in the west, just that com­mu­nal needs may have to pre­vail. I’ll stop. This is a dis­turb­ing train of thought.

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