Man Gets Prison Sentence For Collecting Rainwater On His Own Property
- Thread starter davey72
- Start date
davey72 said:
Ridiculous; 30 days in prison let alone a second.
In Bolivia, the U.S. company Bechtel made it illegal to do same.
davey72 said:
At first on reading the above article I thought "that's outrageous", now I am not so sure. The photos in the article were very misleading, showing someone with a nice set-up for collecting rainwater off their roof into a few smallish containers. This is actually still legal in Oregon. What Gary Harrington was collecting was enough water to fill 20 Olympic size swimming pools, through constructing 10 or 20 foot high dams. His argument seems to be something like that it wasn't affecting any actual natural water-courses, but was just channeling rainwater:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/gary-harrington-oregon-water-rainwater_n_1784378.html
I think if a stream runs through one property, it is reasonable to have laws about how much water can be taken out by the landowner. Legalized water rights on rivers allow fairer distribution of water for e.g. irrigation purposes, and hopefully safeguard environmental values. Otherwise an upstream farmer could take all the water to irrigate their property, and leave downstream farmers and ecosystems lacking water.
