08-04-2013, 11:02 AM
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.
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.