It's illegal to have a rain barrel in Colorado, but that may be about to change

[Tab]

Source: Mother Nature News



There's a saying in Colorado that "whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting." For a long time, state Rep. Jessie Danielson and several of her legislative colleagues have been fighting for water — or, more specifically, fighting for the right of homeowners to conserve rainwater in rain barrels. It's a fight they believe they're about to win.

Colorado is the only state in the nation where it's illegal to have a residential rain barrel.

Danielson of Wheat Ridge and state Rep. Daneya Esgar of Pueblo sponsored a bill in the Colorado Legislature, House Bill 16-1005 (pdf), that would allow homeowners to collect rain from a residential rooftop. The bill has passed the state House with overwhelming bipartisan support, and its fate now rests with the state Senate. The bill has several key restrictions. One would limit homeowners to two rain barrels with a combined capacity of 110 gallons. Another specifies that the collected water would have to be used for outdoor irrigation on the homeowner's property.

"I am optimistic that the Senate will also strongly support this measure," said Danielson. "My farming family has been stewards of Colorado water for generations, and the science shows rain barrels are a common sense way for homeowners to conserve water," she said. The House approved the same bill last year, and the Senate's Agriculture Committee sent it to the Senate floor. However, it died on the calendar there without coming to a floor vote.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/its-illegal-have-rain-barrel-colorado-about-change?google_editors_picks=true

---

How are you going to water your tomatoes? (or buds?)

[rpannier]

1. In a country where rain barrels are criminal

Only criminals have rain barrels

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Is this like Koch anti-solar-panel legislation where you have to pay the utility to NOT use power?

Is this like Koch anti-solar-panel legislation where you have to pay the utility to NOT use power?

I remember something about a mid-west state like Ohio where they had legislation (ultimately Koch funded) that required solar power panel owners to pay a fee to the electric utility for the power they generated and used residentialy that was not fed into the grid and simply consumed on-site.

[rusty quoin]

10. I look forward to a day when the Koch bros are made to pay up the wazoo to exist.

I know what I say is in anger rather than practicality, but they destroy everything for profit. I hate them.

[JoeyT]

19. Y'all can't collect the water that falls on your house,

we need that water for refineries, fracking, and paper mills.

I'm just kidding. Sort of.

[AxionExcel]

23. Republican screw-the-proles economics

[rusty quoin]

3. If you leave the lid off your trash can and rainwater gets in, is that presently illegal there?

The trash can tips over and waters your tomatoes. Does the sheriff pay a visit?

What if you set up a gutter system that goes from roof directly to your tomatoes. Is that okay?

[xloadiex]

4. Can someone please explain

why this is illegal in the first place?

[deathrind]

7. Here...

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-government-forbids-us-from-collecting-rain-water-for-consumption-If-so-why

[rusty quoin]

14. This explains a lot. Being from the east it sounds insane.

Living in San Diego and learning about its history, this makes sense. Everything was about H2O in its past. Lawmakers making decisions like that then is not surprising. Time to take it off the books.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

25. Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

[xloadiex]

15. Thanks

Being a big city dweller, I only use mine for watering my garden. It didn't even occur to me that people wanted to possibly use it for drinking.

[Major Nikon]

16. For the same reason wells and dams are illegal in many areas of the US

If you are collecting water that would otherwise be used in other areas, you are having an impact on collective water supplies. There are also other concerns like people using personal water reservoirs for drinking water and/or to avoid using government provided water and sewage systems.

[tabasco]

35. That is such a ridiculous, stupid and absurd argument,

you should be embarrassed for repeating it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. Do you think someone has the right to divert the rivers that run through their property?

What about the people downstream - if you think it's absurd to stop people building dams, or extracting all the water they can from an underground source, what happens to them?

[Major Nikon]

38. Well you certainly make a convincing argument

[backscatter712]

29. Colorado is a semi-arid state, so water is a scarce and valuable resource.

Political squabbling over water has been a feature of Colorado's history since before it became a state.

The water laws here are byzantine, and interests from farmers and ranchers to industries to municipal water suppliers guard their water rights jealously. We have senior and junior water rights, depending on the original year that water sources were spoken for, dating back to 1865. There are a lot of rules - "Use it or lose it", requirements of beneficial use, powers of eminent domain to create ditches and waterways to move water from one place to another, etc. etc. etc.

It's also why the Rocky Mountains have a bunch of dams, tunnels, and waterways that were built over the last hundred years - to bring water from the mountains to the farms and cities. People take it for granted that they can turn on their tap and get a glass of water whenever they want, but there's a lot of infrastructure that made that possible.

As for big water users, like farmers, it's more difficult. Even in good years, they fight for water. In drought years, there's not enough water to go around - if you have senior water rights (which aren't cheap), you get to water your crops first. If your water rights are junior, you get water after the senior rightsholders are done. If the water runs out, too bad.

So, when a drought comes, a political fist fight is coming with it. The farmers and other big water rights holders oppose the rainbarrel bill because in their mind, it's "stealing".

One of the reasons why fracking is so controversial is because of the water - there's the potential for contamination of underground reservoirs, there's the problem with wastewater from fracking operations having all sorts of nasty shit in it, and the frackers use a LOT of water, that the farmers want, Sure the oil and gas guys say "Hey, no problem, we purify the water when we're done with it, you can use it downstream." Suuuuuure you do...

In drought years, we're one step away from the Fremen in Dune.

[Jerry442]

34. Maybe you should start shopping for one of those snappy plastic suits.

Make sure you accessorize it with Herbert's mysterious super-advanced reclamation technology that didn't parboil the Fremen in their own sweat.

[backscatter712]

36. When Colorado's in a hot drought summer, I've been tempted to invest in a stillsuit...

[cannabis_flower]

32. Also..

I have a friend who was confronted by law enforcement here in Texas. He was concerned about mosquitoes. My friend showed him that the barrel was covered and there wasn't any way for mosquitoes to get in but he still made him dump it.

[Kalidurga]

5. What rain barrel?

[Tab]

12. Sorry, but that's photoshopped in...

Although to think about it, does it have to be a barrel? Or would a square suffice?

[Kalidurga]

13. Well yeah it's photo shopped in

That fence was not in the original pic. But, come to think of it the accidentally left out in the rain with the lid off garbage can is a very good idea and a whole lot harder to enforce. I suppose an official could peek behind a fence.

[deathrind]

6. Water laws are insane...

Many were written with good intent 100+ years ago but have wound their way into the realm of insanity since then.

[SHRED]

8. Here's how much is possible

One inch of rain on one thousand square feet of roof (no need to include pitch of roof) yields 600 gallons of water.

I fill from 500 sq ft of roof and my 205 gallon Bushman cannot keep up with our SoCal coastal storms.
Wish I had room for a 2,000 gallon tank.

I use mine for landscape irrigation vegetable garden, and growing my medicine.

[oldandhappy]

9. Weird. Having a rain barrel in a dry state makes sense!

[Turn CO Blue]

11. I have never really understood the argument against personal water collection here.

The one I hear all the time is that it's "criminal" because collecting water is essentially (supposedly) removing water from the water cycle and hurting people downstream. How could that be so? Matter is neither created nor destroyed.

Storing water in a rain barrel only DELAYS it's return into the water cycle. And really, most people are only delaying a gallon or two at a time. If you didn't collect some of the rain water, where would it go? The rain flows onto the plants, trees, grasses and into the dirt and ground, or it runs across the concrete down the street into the sewage system or into the rivers or it's partly evaporated. In all those cases, it is returned into the water cycle. Guess what? When you use some of that water from the barrel intentionally - where does it go? It goes onto plants, or into the ground or some of it evaporates. Same damned thing as before, only delayed a bit. If you watered the plants with city-water - how is that different? Where do we think THAT water comes from? That water comes from the same water cycle.

The only time it would not go back into the water cycle is if it were never used and stored in a evaporation-proof container, or if it were transported far enough away that it would become part of a different water cycle.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the counter argument I've heard and at this point, my understanding of how this law is a bit crazy.

[kentauros]

17. It also seems to me that one major argument against such laws

is that any construction over natural ground creates a "footprint." That is, it's a quantifiable area that is now blocking that same water from soaking into the ground. The rest of the ground around it can also only soak so much extra that the footprint is blocking. It would take a lot of rain (or even flooding) to saturate the ground under a construction, due to it having to move sideways to get there.

I don't know Texas laws on rainwater collection, but they must allow it, or you wouldn't see so many people doing it in Central Texas (my parents have two 5,000 gallon tanks on their property; they only rarely had to go to well water during the droughts we had a few years ago.)

The changes to the water laws in Colorado per the OP seems minute. No more than 110 gallons total? That's rather restrictive. I can understand it being that way in the mountains, where soil saturation is going to be high due to shallow soil depth, but that's simply not the case on the plains.

[Lodestar]

20. I've wondered if the same argument could be made for septic systems.

That water is essentially treated first and then returned to the earth. Doesn't
it count? Often septics are not seen as a water saving system, but aren't they?

[ohnoyoudidnt]

31. Also when you consider the amount of rooftop

space that would be used to collect water compared to the rest of the state that isn't covered by rooftops you are
probably talking about a very small fraction of a percent.

[mountain grammy]

18. The land owners with water rights in my area are going batshit crazy

I can't wait to get my rain barrel going...

[Lodestar]

21. Amen. And you don't need to install a water softener or make as

many plumbing repairs due to minerals, corrosion, etc. if you want potable drinking water. Rain water, if properly treated, is much easier on your entire system AND no well required. Even easier if used simply for landscape.

[colorado_ufo]

22. I assumed that it was because of breeding mosquitos.

They breed in any standing water, even water collecting in unused flower pots. If barrels are legal, then it would have to be regulated that they were all completely covered.

I grew up down south, before mosquito control, and they were unbelievable back then. Several weeks of the year, it was nearly impossible to go outside - you would be completely covered! As a small child, I slept with mosquito netting over my crib.

Maybe my assumption was incorrect about Colorado, but I know that we are encouraged to empty the water from every standing vessel, no matter how small, after a rain.

West Nile disease is a big concern.

[TheDormouse]

26. That was my first thought too--we're seeing this problem with Zika virus in LatinAmerica nt

[woodsprite]

28. They have water wigglers - little things that sit on the surface of the water

that disturbs water tension so mosquitos can't breed. Hubby has one in each of his water barrels and in our bird bath.

[blackspade]

24. What is the origin of this restriction?

[backscatter712]

30. See my post above.

Colorado is a semi-arid state. Much dryer than areas in the eastern US, so people guard water jealously.

We're like the Fremen in Dune.

[Dr. Strange]

33. That explains all of the crysknives I saw last time I drove through Colorado.

[TheDormouse]

27. It is (or used to be) illegal in Chicago to cut ice from Lake Michigan

(Older family who lived there told me about this law.) Not sure if the law is still on the books, and whether it is/was just a local ordinance vs a state law.

At any rate, the reason was that the ice companies had a monopoly on the ice back in the days before electric refrigerators existed, when everybody used an "ice box" to preserve their food.