Collectively Conscious - Many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use...
Utah isn’t the only state with rainwater collection bans. Colorado, Oregon and Washington also have rainwater collection restrictions that limit the free use of rainwater, but these restrictions vary among different areas of the states and legislators have passed some laws to help ease the restrictions.
In Colorado, two new laws were recently passed that exempt certain small-scale rainwater collection systems, like the kind people might install on their homes, from collection restrictions.
1 comment:
Out west there are some land owners who possess holding exceeding a million acres or more. Ranches with acreage measured in the tens of thousands are quite common. Does it really take that much imagination to realize the impact resulting from the actions of relatively few individual land holders? The history of the west is rife with conflict and range wars due to water-right issues and abuse.
When a rancher upstream chooses to dam and divert the melting snow-pack that passes across his property it affects everyone else downstream who'd been traditionally dependent upon those same waterways.
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