The New “Water Barons”: Wall Street Mega-Banks Are Buying Up The World’s Water

[happyslug]

4. Gary Harrington CAN collect water on his land, but he needed a permit...

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/rainwater.asp

http://www.watercache.com/blog/2012/09/rainwater-collection-leads-to-jail-sentence-how-news-headlines-get-it-wrong/

He had 13 MILLION Gallons of water in three ponds, Oregon Water law said that water belonged to the City of Medford (Who have had a permit for it since 1925). He had the right to collect water for his personal use, but decided to make three three nice size ponds totalling over 13 million gallons. The State said that was excessive and refused to issue a permit and ordered him to leave the water flow freely.

Sorry, Oregon follows the "Western Rule" of water, the first person who used it had superior claim to any other user, even a upstream user. In effect he was "stealing" water, water that NOT only fell on his land as rain, but water the FLOWED through his land after falling as rain elsewhere. He was trying use the "Eastern Rule" of water in a Western state.

The Eastern Rule on water is upstream users have priority over down stream users. It is a good rule in areas with more then sufficient rainfall, but it was found to be unworkable in the more arid west, so the Western Rule was adopted in those Arid States.

http://www.oregon.gov/owrd/pages/mgmt.aspx