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rainwater collection
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In Utah, if you don't own water shares, it's illegal to collect the water off your own roof. By trapping it, you're preventing it from reaching the rivers & aquifers, where it becomes property of irrigation customers.
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Wow...never thought of rainwater collection as illegal. That's fascinating. But I live about half a mile from Lake Michigan, so water shortages are not on the local radar.
Sally wrote: "I did that last year. It was a nice source of water for my garden but a better breeding ground for mosquitos."It is so dry and rains so infrequently here that it just doesn't seem worth the effort. Did you really collect enough to water your garden?
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may-july that the tub was usually full. It was dry in August, of course.
Can you imagine how much water you could get in your barrels in the Pacific Northwest?
My daughter and I visited Eugene during our college visit adventures. We drove from Portland straight out to the coast and then south to I can't remember the name of the little town and then east to Eugene. It was so beautiful, all misty and green... do you even have to water your yard or garden there?
Barb wrote: "Do they have little drains everywhere to catch every drop of water that falls?"Nope. They're just looking for ways to keep people from using free water when they (the people) can be charged for municipal water.
when collecting rain water is outlawed, only outlaws will collect rainwater
i have a friend who did one of the rain garden deals where it collects the water into a pool from the downspouts and then disperses it gently to flowers. sort of cool but really expensive when they had it done. like some kind of green zen deal. looks great though
Yeah, I was thinking about the whole "illegal to collect rainwater" thing. Somebody explain that to me because I don't think I understand. So the government owns the rain? F--k that.
Water is a precious commodity in the west. Strange things happen when you deal with precious commodities. When I lived where Phil does, I was always concerned about the future of the water supply. The local developers are quite oblivious to the strong possibility that there will not be enough water in the future to sustain life as they want it to be (with steady growth of population).
yeah if i lived there i would have a sponge roof and a moat built around my house. sorry if i "accidentally" retain some of the natural water that falls. "sorry, (said in my best canadian accent) it just sorta soaked in eh"hey, if they own the rainwater i want a frickin' settlement check when they let their rain fall on my property when i am having a cook-out of party. my invoice to them would say "unwanted precipitation"
Strange things happen when you deal with precious commodities.This makes sense to me.
I'll see if I can find some pictures of the lake near Frisco, CO that was more than 35' below normal level about 6 years ago due to the fact that Denver owns the water rights. An hour west of Denver in the mountains was near devastated because they needed to water lawns in Denver.
We have just come through 6 years of drought. Prior to the drought it was illegal to collect rain water. In Sydney we lived with water restrictions, no car washing, no hosing of hard surfaces, no garden sprinklers, no watering of gardens except for Wednesdays & Sundays after 4pm with a hand held hose. This forced the government to rethink the rain water collection policy. Now everyone (slight exaggeration) owns a rain water tank.
I grow up in country Australia. Rain water was the only water available. ....years later I am alive & extremely healthy.
(fish don't pee in it!)
I grow up in country Australia. Rain water was the only water available. ....years later I am alive & extremely healthy.
(fish don't pee in it!)
i live in the midwest and i NEVER remember a time where we were limited or rationed on water. we have plenty of rain and moisture throughout the year. we can do slip and slides, run through the sprinklers and the local fire department used to crack open a hydrant in town in the hottest august days for kids to play in. this is just something i don't quite get
I am so jealous. My kids have missed out on the opportunity to run through sprinklers & play on a slip & slid.
ms.petra wrote: "Lake Dillon"
Yes
Yes
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It was sad and scary around 2002 when the drought was its worst...neighbors would scowl or even tattle if you watered during the wrong time of day, or worse for too long.
BunWat wrote: "Lake Dillon is a reservoir, not a naturally occurring lake. I'm pretty sure. If its the one I'm thinking of. I used to live around there."
If I remember correctly you lived near Leadville, which isn't very far away.
That is true Bun it is a reservoir, along with the Green Mountain Reservoir off of Highway 9, but to me it was amazing how fast the water disappeared from the reservoir due to a couple bad winters of snowfall. I believe that the Green River was actually down to its original banks, and Lake Dillon you could walk out to places that would have been 20 - 25 feet over your head normally. The main problem being this is all being seen from a Midwesterners perspective, and I will admit that water is more plentiful here.
My thought is more along the line of even though the reservoirs were built for just such emergencies, wouldn't areas be better off restricting growth beyond what the local natural resources can support. But more tax dollars will not allow this, so the next time will be potentially even worse, all because they are trying to maintain lush lawns, where nature is giving big hints that maybe they shouldn't.
If I remember correctly you lived near Leadville, which isn't very far away.
That is true Bun it is a reservoir, along with the Green Mountain Reservoir off of Highway 9, but to me it was amazing how fast the water disappeared from the reservoir due to a couple bad winters of snowfall. I believe that the Green River was actually down to its original banks, and Lake Dillon you could walk out to places that would have been 20 - 25 feet over your head normally. The main problem being this is all being seen from a Midwesterners perspective, and I will admit that water is more plentiful here.
My thought is more along the line of even though the reservoirs were built for just such emergencies, wouldn't areas be better off restricting growth beyond what the local natural resources can support. But more tax dollars will not allow this, so the next time will be potentially even worse, all because they are trying to maintain lush lawns, where nature is giving big hints that maybe they shouldn't.
The Powers That Be in our area want to build a pipeline here from Lake Powell to support future growth. Never mind that the lake will not support that growth, and that existing water rights (California, Nevada) would deplete it long before it was our turn at the tap.The pipeline would cost more than $1 billion (with a "b"), with the tab picked up by taxpayers in one or two counties. Meanwhile, conservation efforts amount to... oh, wait, there haven't been any. Got to keep those 13 golf courses green, you know.
How far would the pipeline be, Phil? Would the pipeline be underground? That's fascinating.
t. boone pickens did oil, then wind and now is investing heavily in water. water rights. i read about it in his recent book: The First Billion Is The Hardest. here is an interesting article about water rightshttp://www.popularmechanics.com/scien...
RandomAnthony wrote: "How far would the pipeline be, Phil? Would the pipeline be underground? That's fascinating."It would be 139 miles of buried pipe. Details (the official snow job) are available here.
I live in the south and generally we don't have to worry about water. We have enough hurricanes and flooding that we usually keep water. But a couple years ago we didn't have very many and it caused a dry spell, the lakes and reservoir were pretty low. About the only thing they did was to put a ban on washing cars and watering lawns. We can collect all the water we want in buckets. Hell it rained so hard this past Tuesday that the 5 gallon bucket my grandson put out to catch water for his flowers was full in ten minutes. It poured down, I was waiting for it to stop so I could go home. It was a steady rain all night long.
Anyone here do that? Pros and cons of collecting rainwater? What can you do with the water?