I love “The Straight Dope”, and have just read the article ““Elvis has left the building.” Who said it first?” “Elvis has left the building.” Who said it first? - The Straight Dope. Below the article is a heading “Questions we’re still thinking about”. One of those questions is “Does any one group or individual, anywhere, own rain? Or claim to?” from Saqib R. of Los Angeles.
I live in Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore is known for many things. It may not be known for its “rain tax.” This tax was imposed by our former Democratic Governor, Martin O’Malley and repeal of it has been promised by our current Republican Governor Larry Hogan, but he’s very busy and we assume he’s working on it. For more information just search Google for “Baltimore City Rain Tax”. I also searched under “Who Owns the Rain?” and received many hits.
The rain that fell on my backyard in New York belonged to the New York City Watershed. Out west in some regions all the water belongs to someone. I don’t know legally who owns any rain before it hits the ground, but once it does plenty of ownership is claimed.
I’m not sure if it’s correct to say the Federal Gov’t “owns” the airspace, but they can regulate activities there under the interstate commerce clause. Kinda like gov’t can regulate wildlife, so perhaps we can say the gov’t “owns” the deer and such. I think it’s a stretch, no one can own a wild animal, no one can own a rain drop, so it’s a gov’t function to regulate these things that cannot be owned.
Baltimore’s “Rain Tax” isn’t actually a tax on rain. It’s more of a tax to control runoff pollution into the Chesapeake Bay and was implemented in response to a mandate from the EPA. Calling it a Rain Tax kinda misses the point of it, though admittedly you are taxed based on the square footage of your real estate, which is proportional to the amount of rain that falls on your land.
That said, the EPA mandate also applies to New York, Pennsylvania (where I live), West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, but Maryland was the only state to implement a tax for it.
While I do get the point of it, it’s still a stupid tax. There are better ways of solving the problem, IMHO.
Throw that in my face again … Robin Hood was a loon, who the hell names their daughter Red Riding and not expect her to grow up to be a scoundrel? “The wolf ate grandma.”, yeah right …
Colorado was the last place in the nation that banned collecting rain in barrels. But that law has been repealed … up to a point. There still will be limits on how much a homeowner can collect.
BTW, rules on water rights are generally more restrictive in the US west, not less.
Living on the east coast, the term “stormwater fee” makes a lot more sense than “rain tax.” Intuitively, sure, you own all the rain that falls on your property. You can dispose of it how you see fit, but if you can’t do that without municipal infrastructure, then you bear some of the cost.
To my understanding, the laws in the southwest come from a polar opposite perspective, that of treating water like a limited resource. And those laws are also astonishingly convoluted and archaic. I could totally see someone reasoning it would be appropriate to penalize rain collection, and I could totally see such a strange law outliving contemporary rationale.
I supplse it boils down to whether the rain water is considered to be an asset or a liability. Then the usual paradigm kicks in: the government will tend to claim the fiscal benefit from an asset and absolve itself of the responsibility for a liability. Meanwhile, lobbyists are there to persuade the government to do the opposite. With the bottom feeders to incur any costs involved.
I can only conclude from this post that you pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to what goes on around you. It is incredibly common knowledge that the eastern part of the US gets far more rain than the western part.
In most of the western half of the nation, rain IS, IN FACT, A LIMITED RESOURCE. In the interest of fighting ignorance, I am including a link to a map that should make things perfectly clear to you.
OK. Lighten up, Francis. I think I did approach the matter from that exact perspective, but thank you for constricting the matter to that next anal level of detail. Yes, the West is dryer, and things are tighter out there.
