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Authored by: PJ on Saturday, April 20 2013 @ 01:35 PM EDT |
Here's an article I
found for you that describes
Oregon water law. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: lnuss on Saturday, April 20 2013 @ 02:48 PM EDT |
Disputes over water have been going on in the western U.S. at least since the
early to mid-1800s, and perhaps before that (certainly since the first
non-Indians settled in the west), and selling water rights separately from the
land is very common -- it can bring fairly high prices. There are even
agreements between states specifying how water in various rivers/lakes/etc. are
to be divided, meaning that even water that comes from the mountains of Colorado
is controlled by these various agreements even out to California.
Irrigation water periodically runs through a ditch in my back yard, but I'm not
entitled to any of it -- easy as it would be to siphon some off, I'd get in a
lot of trouble if I did -- since it belongs to a farmer almost half a mile south
of me (and I'm on city water, he's on a well for drinking water, the ditch water
is for his crops).
I suspect that a lot of folks in the east, especially those who've never (or
seldom) been west, have trouble understanding just how dry it really is. A few
large cities (Denver and Los Angeles, for example) use water brought in (piped,
etc.) from elsewhere, and have long since grown way beyond what the water in the
area will actually support. A similar problem is there for California
agriculture.
As PJ says, there's nothing new about this, though some headlines might be new.
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Larry N.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 20 2013 @ 06:27 PM EDT |
>e claimed he was collecting rainwater, but the state said he was siphoning
off water from a stream that fed into the city's water supply.
The issue is that rainwater, snow, etc are legally considered to be part of the
water in the stream. However, that definition is found in case law related to
local (municipal and county) ordinances, but not case law related to federal or
state statutes.
This has some unexpected consequences, when it comes to snow removal. (The low
budget shopping centres simply pile the snow up in parking spaces furtherest
from the road into the shopping centre.)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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