abellandapomegranate:thinksquad:
Government Makes Rainwater Illegal
Yep, RAIN WATER IS ILLEGAL.
As bizarre as it sounds, I guess it really shouldn’t be a surprise. We have covered numerous stories of how the government has been chipping away at the rights of land. From survival gardens being seized to the land owners in California who are being forced back on to the grid, people’s rights as land owners are being shredded by local, state and federal governments.
In the latest abuse of power, a man in Oregon has been sentenced to 30 days in jail and ordered to pay a $1,500 fine for collecting rainwater on his own land. Gary Harrington was convicted of nine misdemeanor crimes for filling his three man-made reservoirs with rainwater and snow runoff. The state of Oregon claims the water that fell from the sky, is owned by them and the Medford Water Commission.
As unreal as it may sound, at least 9 states have made it illegal to collect rainwater on your own land. Utah, Oregon, Colorado and a number of other states have passed rainwater laws that either limit or all out ban the collection of rainwater.Okay, but actually, this guy in Oregon: he built enormous reservoirs to hoard millions of gallons of water that needed to go into the watershed—a really contentious watershed where there are huge and longstanding (bitter!) disputes over water rights between farmers, fishermen, and Native communities. Even in southern Oregon there are water shortages. This wasn’t just an issue of The Man coming down on some guy with some rain barrels, this was a white dude in an area full of white-supremacist survivalist compounds, up- and downriver from Native people with disputed water rights, building himself a private lake and hoarding ridiculously enormous quantities of water while salmon runs and farms are going dry.
It’s complicated.