But you didnt tell us the details. Was it a civil or criminal citation, or just from the HOA? Was it mentioned in a news source?
But that is not what happens with rain barrels. If you use the water from the barrel on an occasional basis for light watering, the water will evaporate. It will only penetrate into the very top of the soil rather than run off or percolate to the aquifer. Perhaps if you dumped all 200L out at one time in one spot the water would get to the aquifer, but not if you’re watering your lawn or garden with it.
This is the philosophy in Canberra - not a desert, but stressed from time to time i.e. requiring restrictions on use
http://www.planning.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/3378/Rainwater_tanks.pdf
I said there was no HOA in another post. He was cited for having a rain barrel in the open, not collecting from the roof. He got a citation and had to pay a fine. Las Animas County has been in drought conditions for a long time so I suspect the deputy was not in the mood to just tip it over and tell him to not do it again. My friend pissed and moaned but as far as I know did not contact the media.
I live in the Colorado mountains. I have a well on my own property that I own and pay for the electric to operate. It is my well and does not feed anything but my house.
It is against the law to water anything outside my house. Including just washing my car. It’s ok for me, as I don’t have a ‘yard’. But it’s still a bit nutso IMHO. YMMV, whatever.
Maybe needing all these complex laws is God’s way of saying you should not live in a place with very little water?
(sort of reminds me of people who need to use Viagra , maybe they should just not have sex? That’s why they have the bit about asking your doctor about having sex)
No, the corollary would be that you bought the Viagra with your own money, but you have to apply for a permit from the government and they tell you how often and in what position you are allowed to enjoy the benefits of what you have paid for.
This issue has been hashed back and forth, and I understand it from all angles. I still say, however, that if I owned a property and wanted to use a rain barrel to save a few bucks, I would figure out a way to camouflage or hide it from Big Brother. And I wouldn’t feel the least bit guilty about using rain that fell on my property.
I live in an area that has lots and lots of good, clean water, so I understand the basic thought that, yeah, if you live where there is not enough water, then you better be willing to pay to get it. There was an article in today’s paper highlighting the fact that people in CA are conserving water so well that the municipal water companies are not collecting enough with water bills, and will have to raise water rates. So, in effect, the thank you for saving water is to pay more for using less.
Here in the east we have a similar issue with beach houses. People want to build houses where they can get wiped out by hurricanes. And of course they want the government to fund a lot of repairs when damage happens. The private sector knows it’s very risky so they won’t sell flood insurance. You have to buy it from the government.
I thought I was out but they keep pulling me back in…
If, as you say, light watering only results in that water being lost to evaporation then surely any light rain falling will also be mostly lost to evaporation and so a capture system becomes even more of a benefit?
And lest it become lost in discussion, if you live in an area so pressed for water you should not be having a garden that needs artificial watering in the first place or at the very least a subsoil direct irrigation system is fitted.
And in your extensive research of the areas in question, how much of the precipitation is “light rain,” and how much comes from heavy downpours that normally runs off to feed downstream areas?
Actually, have you done any research at all into any of your claims or ideas and why they might be problematic in the situation? So far, you seem to have confused a situation in Australia, where most cities are coastal so runoff ends up lost in an ocean, and the Western US, where runoff goes hundreds of miles before reaching a sea, made unsupported conspiracy-like assertions that this is all some ploy of Evil Big Companies, and don’t seem to have a good grasp of the actual climate in question.
It really doesn’t matter. The nature of the rainfall will have implications for the sort of system installed but do I take it that you agree then that capturing water during light rain is a good thing? if it was going to be lost due to evaporation then surely capturing in sealed containers for future use results in a net gain?
try this,
Imagine if everyone in a watershed captured every drop of water that landed on their roof and stored it in a covered container, bund or similar. Now at this point you will agree that there is now more accessible water available to that watershed, all those small showers that are lost to evaporation? All those big storms that can be potentially damaging?
That requires no real discussion as it is obviously true.
Now imagine that instead of using the water themselves the homeowners released the water from their tanks, in a controlled manner over time, back into those rivers and aquifers.
There has still been no water lost from the system as a whole, indeed, because evaporation is reduced with the covered storage there is still more water available.
The homeowner still needs water though. In the scenario above I ask quite simply, which is the more efficient? To draw it from their capture tank directly or wait for it to travel downstream, undergo evaporation losses, incur transportation costs, incur treatment costs and then have it piped or tankered to the house?
The waste water will return to the treatment plant, aquifers or rivers regardless of where it came from so that is irrelevant.
And in any case, the amount of area of domestic roofs when compared to the area of the state is insignificant.
2.3 million housing units as of 2014, call it 2 million roofs.
Allow a big roof of 200 sqm. That gives us 400 million sqm or 400 sq kilometres.
Total area of Colorado? around 270,000 sq kilometres.
In other words, even if all those roofs had perfect capture technology and threw all of that water away (they’d have to take it to another state or the sea to do so though) it would result in a net reduction of water for Colorado of
0.15%
But of course they don’t throw it away do they? it isn’t lost, it gets kept within the system.
Now if you are not interested in the efficient use of water then fine, say so, but I’d be interested in knowing why you think the current system is more efficient overall by outlawing domestic rainwater harvesting.
From a theoretical perspective, you’re probably right. It could be more efficient to capture it that way. But in the real world, the homeowner would use 100% of the water themselves. There would be no surplus to release. All the water would go towards making their landscaping as lush as possible. Perhaps if you had a community which would actually release the water and let their lawns die if need be, then maybe it could work. But in the real world, people would horde the water for their own personal use.
A dam is like a huge rain barrel that works like you describe. It captures the runoff from a wide area and releases it at a controlled rate. But with a dam, there are regulatory systems which control the flow and who gets to use the water. It’s not like the communities around the dam can take as much as they like. Communities hundreds of miles downstream also need the water and that may mean that the people around the dam have to use much less of the water than they otherwise have access to.
Interesting juxtaposition. Past practice is relevant to the extent that it supports your point?
Also, since you mention Australia a few times, just keep in mind that the population of the Outback is apparently 700,000 spread over 2.5 million square miles. Denver has a population of about the same, moreover, 40 million people depend on the water from the Colorado River basin.
Look, I’m no expert on this issue, and these laws do seem odd to me, but I personally wouldn’t be so quick to conclude that Colorado is doing it wrong because it seems odd on first reflection.
Though exercise: If everyone were entitled to the water on their property that is part of the watershed (like rain), then how will the farmers in the Central Valley of California grow crops? I’m not saying that Colorado’s law makes sense on an individual scale but being able to use all of the free-flowing water on your own property seems at odds with the principal that those downstream have water rights too.
Two things. Firstly, why the hell have they got lawns in the desert in the first place?
Secondly, Any water that they use, profligate or not, would have to come from somewhere in the system.
The thought that people would just use more if it were self-collected and stored I simply don’t buy. If someone invests in sinking a well on their property and has access to lots of lovely “free” water do they suddenly become wasteful? I think once you have the appreciation of water as a finite resource you are far more likely to be careful about wasting it.
But if the people around the communities are collecting and using their own water and the communities downstream do the same then the demand on water stored in the dam is reduced. In effect you are spreading a massive dam across the state in smaller barrel-sized amounts.
fair point, but water-scarce areas elsewhere are not rushing to mimic Colorado’s water-rights set-up but they are seeking to expand domestic water-harvesting and conservation practices. Those methods have a good track record of making arid areas habitable stretching back into far antiquity whereas the Colorado laws have a chequered history of 150 years.
Also true but if anything that increases the need for the existing and future developments to minimise their demand on the water supply.
I haven’t heard or read a credible argument in support of it as yet, I’ll always be willing to give one a fair hearing.
I don’t buy the thought that a homeowner collecting and using rainfall is any more of a net drain on the water supply than if they took it out of a tap. Done properly there will be just as much if not more water available for the California farmers.
If there is no net loss to the system as you claim, then where is the water going? The Colorado river used to make it to the ocean, it doesn’t anymore. If the water all makes it back to the watershed in the way you claim, then it would still be there.
At best, you seem to be making a case for even more insanely convoluted laws and regulations–you can have rain barrels, but they must have covers and other anti-evaporation measures, and you are still subject to some nebulous regulation regarding how to discharge the contents of my rain barrel back into local rivers.
Under your proposals, it seems it would still be a problem for me to stick a bucket out to catch the rain, so we’re right back where we started, just with a bunch more red tape and government oversight.
I live in the Florida Keys where some homes still use cisterns to catch rainwater as their primary source of freshwater. We are in the process of having a central sewer system installed and are being encouraged to convert our existing septic tanks into cisterns to use for watering lawns, washing cars etc.
Which areas, specifically, are you speaking of? I ask because I’m not sure what areas have a modern, region-wide government that deals in environmental issues and tens of millions of people relying on scarce water.
One can surely point out areas where there’s modern, effective governments (e.g., Australia) but very few people. One can also point out areas where there are lots of people, but the governments simply don’t have much capacity or interest in terms of environmental law and rulemaking (e.g., various parts of China undergoing deforestation and water problems).