What say the people of Puna to this?

[OpenD]

These old "water rights" laws mostly date back to the Wild West days, in western states, when the principle was established that original use of water gave you rights over later arrivals.

Colorado had a big dustup over this issue a couple of years ago when people started using rain barrels in the city and were told they were illegal. So Colorado did the sensible thing and changed the law. For big users, like a new ranch, the old rules still apply, but for an individual homeowner there's no issue. And of course in Hawai'i there's no issue with rainwater catchment. Nor is there in Texas, where the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association ARCSA) is based.

But I'm reminded that there are huge differences in the way different states treat beaches. In some states the beach, up to the mean highwater mark is considered public property, but in the State of Washington beaches are considered private property and digging for clams on someone's beach without authorization is a crime.

[sputnut]

beaches are still all public in Hawaii, right?

comin' your way soon!

[peteadams]

The rainwater issue sounds exactly like reserved mineral rights on private property. The acreage of our first house in southwest Washington had the mineral rights reserved by the successors of the railroad that was granted the property by the government in the 19th century (talk about crony capitalism!). When we sold the house a lady from Montana was very interested, but in the end decided not to buy it. The reason was, she said, that she was very familiar with the depredations of private property by the copper mining industry in Montana. Companies would buy up mineral rights and dig test holes or mines anywhere they wanted, no matter the effects on the owners. She didn't want to ever risk something like that happening to any property she owned. Perhaps this guy should have checked the laws a bit before he built his big ponds. Eagle Point is obviously in a relatively dry area of Oregon.

[kimo wires]

If rain catching was illegal here. Most of us wouldn't be here and puna wouldn't exist as we know it.
Seems to me that when a reservoir is full it would continue to overflow out and provide the same water downstream as before.
And seems that the reservoirs could even provide relief in times of drought or fire.
So if they were constructed properly as not to fail and cause flooding. I don't see a problem.
The only problem I see is too much Governmental interference.

[kalakoa]

Ahem. Catchment is the waiver that allows ag subdivisions without County water connections. Land subdivision makes developers (and their buddies in government) lots of money. I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.

[MarkP]

"Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noir film, directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne, and starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston. The film was inspired by the California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century by which Los Angeles interests secured water rights in the Owens Valley."

The story above includes a megalomaniac, government corruption, murder, and incest. While obviously gratuitously exaggerated for Hollywood, nevertheless the story above is rather tame in comparison to much of the history of water rights in the west.

[peteadams]

Was going to add to the above post that our deed has a reservation that "Title to all mineral and metallic mines reserved to the State of Hawaii." Not sure whether this is good, but probably a better title owner than a mining corporation. Though lava is certainly a mineral it's not likely the state will want us for a quarry.

[Kelena]

It is usually not the rain catching that is illegal. It is the diversion of natural runoff from a riparian resource used by others that is sometimes illegal and that is for a good reason -- not an arbitrary one.

Imagine that every property owner along a river that served as a drinking source or perhaps even a source of food and recreation (e.g., crop irrigation, fishing) diverted the runoff that feeds that river for their own amusement and recreation....or perhaps to avoid payment of a fee to an irrigation district, or a combination of these motives.

The river would soon run dry. The crops wouldn't get watered and canoes, kayaks and fish would run aground.

Not a problem in Hawaii and absolutely no relation to this state or its issues with water which issues are peculiar to the islands. The American West has a complex system of water laws for a reason: There is not enough of it.

For those who wish a nation or a state without laws, I suggest Somalia. There is absolutely no water policy there of any kind.

[Bullwinkle]

Its the policy of water privatization I have an issue with - I am naive enough to believe that one person can not deny another water - much in the same way the air we breath is a common resource

A future in which drinking water only comes in plastic bottles seems closer and closer.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/co...43398.html

[MarkP]

I gave a ride to a young woman hitchhiker one time. She was perhaps a woofer. At least she pursued such interests. She mentioned having rented a place in Colorado. To get water for a garden she hooked up a rain barrel to the downspout from the gutter. The landlord came by and started to panic. He said he could get fined and insisted that she disassemble the rain barrel. In that case it was not about diverting a stream. It truly is illegal to catch the rain off of your roof in some places.

We get 15 feet/yr of rain in Puna. There is little point in asking us to comment on how such laws seem to us. The rain that falls on our property has no value to our neighbors because they have their own. Maybe if there is too much rain someone will complain that we are not keeping run-off from flowing onto their property. Out west resources such as water have been contested to the death as long as there have been people.