Water laws in the American Southwest and West are a patchwork of regulations, many of them bad. Some improvement is showing, however, in a new law that legalizes collecting rainwater for many Colorado residents. Formerly, the water that fell on your land was already considered to belong to someone else. Now more people have legal rights to what falls freely from the sky.
It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado
DURANGO, Colo. — For the first time since territorial days, rain will be free for the catching here, as more and more thirsty states part ways with one of the most entrenched codes of the West.
Precipitation, every last drop or flake, was assigned ownership from the moment it fell in many Western states, making scofflaws of people who scooped rainfall from their own gutters. In some instances, the rights to that water were assigned a century or more ago.
Now two new laws in Colorado will allow many people to collect rainwater legally. The laws are the latest crack in the rainwater edifice, as other states, driven by population growth, drought, or declining groundwater in their aquifers, have already opened the skies or begun actively encouraging people to collect.
Three Questions
1) What are the benefits of catching and using rainwater?
2) Do you have any kind of rain catchment system in your home or town, or if not yet, are there plans to add one?
3) What do you think about the water laws in the Southwest and West, especially in light of recent scientific discoveries about how water really moves through a landscape?
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Ratty 07.02.09 at 4:19 am
I live in Michigan. We have a lot of water so we never think much about it here. They actually assigned ownership of rainwater on people’s land to somebody else? That’s insane! I’m glad they fixed that one.
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Elizabeth Barrette Reply:
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
You are lucky to live where water is plentiful. In the west and southwest, water is scarce and demand high. So yes, the water laws out there can get pretty bizarre.
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Russ 07.02.09 at 1:51 pm
I think it’s something that needs to be promoted more than it currently is, along with greywater systems. I live in San Diego and there is nothing that I know of to help people pursue these things for their homes. Just recently they did start water rationing, but it’s not really enforced. Basically people are given certain days that they can water their lawns and only for a certain amount of time. It’s a start, and I have heard of programs to help people make more drought tolerant landscapes, but not like they should be. They can’t force people to change, but until the local governments start taking it seriously, the majority of the populous won’t either. I would highly doubt that the water rationing effort would even offset the increase of the population, but I have no data to back the claim.
San Diego (and all of SoCal) is still growing, and water use needs to be taken more seriously. As far as I know a lot of the West gets their water from the Colorado River and the from Sierra snow melt. But drawing more and more water from these sources affects more than just us locally. People who live down river and even if Mexico are having water that they should have access to taken from them. And I’m sure relying on snow melt from the mountains is not a viable long term answer either. And this doesn’t even address the environmental impacts and changes that come with redirected this water.
We need to get real and realize that it’s not sustainable to take and take from these sources, and we need to realize that having green grass and wasting water, especially here, just can’t happen. They say that more than 50% of water use is outdoors, for watering and irrigation. That is just ridiculous to me. I’m not saying I’m not part of the problem, but we need to change our way of looking at it, and everyone needs to be part of the solution. Having a green lawn in the Southwest shouldn’t be the norm, and people’s perceptions need to change.
A few months back I was on a bicycle trip near the Colorado River, and was told by a local that in those small river towns, some of the population doesn’t even have rights to use the river water that is in their own backyard, and some even have to pay to get drinking water delivered. I can’t say I understand the rules and regulations behind water rights, but it seems that different districts and municipalities buy rights to the water, and are alotted a certain amount of it. I know there needs to be some system in place to manage the resources, but it seems crazy to me that the water can be owned and regulated by a city or state a thousand miles away and can have rights to it that small towns right next to it don’t.
Sorry for the long comment… It’s a good question that more people should be considering.
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Elizabeth Barrette Reply:
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
It’s a start, and I have heard of programs to help people make more drought tolerant landscapes, but not like they should be.
I’ve written about xericulture, landscaping that uses little or no water:http://gaiatribe.geekuniversalis.com/2009/02/26/what-is-xericulture/
This is definitely something more people should explore. Currently I’m reading Gaia’s Garden, a permaculture book that talks about creating moist microclimates in dry lands by shading and enriching the soil instead of irrigating it.
We need to get real and realize that it’s not sustainable to take and take from these sources, and we need to realize that having green grass and wasting water, especially here, just can’t happen.
I agree. Limiting use to essentials (drinking, hygiene, maybe some crop irrigation) would largely solve the problem. But limiting people’s freedom to buy what they want and do what they want with it … is considered “un-American.” People would rather just let a problem boil over.
A few months back I was on a bicycle trip near the Colorado River, and was told by a local that in those small river towns, some of the population doesn’t even have rights to use the river water that is in their own backyard, and some even have to pay to get drinking water delivered.
I think that local people and wildlife should have first rights to water and other resources, then if there is any left over, other people can have some too. The way it is now, people are living far beyond the carrying capacity of their locale. That way lies disaster. I’ve written about some of the “water woes” too:
http://gaiatribe.geekuniversalis.com/2009/03/06/balancing-fish-with-people/
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