Kelli RoddaRural Colorado residents, that’s who. For the first time since settlers were traipsing across the state in covered wagons, a new law (Senate Bill 80) makes it legal for some residents to capture rainfall. They’re eligible only if there is no water supply available from a municipality or water district. During a visit to Arbor Valley Nursery in Brighton, Colo., Matt Edmundson was trying to explain the state’s byzantine water laws, I walked away shaking my head. I did not understand the prohibition of capturing rain. So I applaud this new law. Like many other states, Colorado has been struggling with water issues from development and drought.
What about the growers?
Unfortunately the growers are left out of this new law. But there is hope. A companion law (House Bill 1129) provides an opportunity for 10 new residential or mixed-use developers to perform pilot projects that collect rain on a grander scale. The projects will collect more than a rain barrel full of data, including how well certain rain collection systems work and how (or if) rain collection interferes with stream flow and decreed water rights. The pilot projects will last 10 years. Of course in true “guvmint” (as we say in the South) fashion, there are lots of hoops to jump through, forms to fill out in triplicate and courts to appear before. Yeah. Colorado has its own court system dedicated to water rights.
Water suppliers agreed to support the bill because developers and residents in the projects must pay for replacement water for every drop collected in the first two years of study, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. Residents can then ask a water court to lower the augmentation requirement.
State Senator Chris Romer, one of the bill’s sponsors, told Channel 9 news in Denver, “The water development community needs to see the pilot programs and needs to see it work well, and then we’ll go to the next phase.”
Perhaps this experiment will render an expanded rainwater collection law.
He knows it’s an uphill (or stream?) battle, but he’s spent two years fighting for it.
“You have to be careful in the West, whether it’s guns, whiskey or water. Those are fighting words in Colorado, so even I can’t take this molecule off this rainy day and put it into my bucket because somebody else owns that water,” he told the news station.
Good luck, senator. I hope your rain barrel is bullet proof.
