Posted on 07/27/2012 10:01:30 AM PDT by rawhide
– A rural Oregon man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail and over $1,500 in fines because he had three reservoirs on his property to collect and use rainwater.
Gary Harrington of Eagle Point, Ore., says he plans to appeal his conviction in Jackson County (Ore.) Circuit Court on nine misdemeanor charges under a 1925 law for having what state water managers called “three illegal reservoirs” on his property – and for filling the reservoirs with rainwater and snow runoff.
“The government is bullying,” Harrington told CNSNews.com in an interview Thursday.
“They’ve just gotten to be big bullies and if you just lay over and die and give up, that just makes them bigger bullies. So, we as Americans, we need to stand on our constitutional rights, on our rights as citizens and hang tough. This is a good country, we’ll prevail,” he said.
The court has given Harrington two weeks to report to the Jackson County Jail to begin serving his sentence.
...Tom Paul, administrator of the Oregon Water Resources Department, claims that Harrington has been violating the state’s water use law by diverting water from streams running into the Big Butte River.
“The law that he is actually violating is not the 1925 provision, but it’s Oregon law that says all of the water in the state of Oregon is public water and if you want to use that water, either to divert it or to store it, you have to acquire a water right from the state of Oregon before doing that activity,” Paul told CNSNews.com.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
I’m not moving there, and I don’t plan on living my life with my pants pulled down and bent over with the government doing what it wants without a lubricant. It’s a choice you have evidently made.
Sheesh, and I thought California was supposed to be the place filled with idiots.
Several years ago during the drought the old hippies who seem to congregate around Durango were putting out rain barrels to water plants and for their annual bath. The state began to cite them and they howled like banshees. It did them no good as the law was ironclad.
Consider the plight of the poor people of Vail. Permits there are for household use only. Hottubs are not a household use. If you have a hottub the annual water use is calculated and you are responsible for replacing that number of gallons from a source outside of that watershed.
The Colorado River Compact allocates Colorado so many acre feet of Colorado River water. That water is pumped from the western slope to the cities of the eastern slope where it is needed.
To replace the water on the watersheds of the western slope hottub owners must drive to Denver and haul water from the eastern slope which has been piped from the western slope back over the divide and pour it on the ground on the western slope where it evaporates and falls as rain on the eastern slope. That's how tight Colorado water laws are.
I do not live in Colorado but the water laws of most western states are based on Colorado law and they are getting stricter and closer to Colorado law all the time. It is a matter of necessity.
That is the essential abstraction underlying my environmental management business method. It is also the essence of a mitigation market.
Thus, to regulate is ALWAYS a taking, a market in which government has no business meddling. It should instead make sure that fraud in such contracts is redressed.
I don’t know about Oregon, but WA state doesn’t need the UN to direct it’s imperialistic treatment of the rural areas of the state. In WA, there is no such thing as “suburbia”. Either it is a city or town, or it is “unincorporated area with no self rule, colonies, if you will, of the state, with some local county rule that must adhere to strict guidelines laid down by the state.
The rural areas of the state are the colonies that exist solely at the pleasure of the state, to be regulated and exploited for the greater good of the state. The law suit over the water rights, state that there are no water rights on private property, except those that were deeded before some Indian Treaty. The goal is to meter all well water and limit the amount of water the property owner can use and charge the property owner for what he does use.
It is not a necessity. Please, get that out of your head. That’s the part you glossed over to wax rhapsodic about Californians. At least think about this. Perhaps you’ve been indoctrinated to buy into this your whole life. They could indoctrinate for a thousand years, and it still wouldn’t be true.
What I see here is a person who seems to be defending the idiotic management of an important resource by government. Since when do we buy into what the government tells us, without question? They have told you that you can’t get along without them. And you being a FReeper actually bought into it, and simply will not listen to common sense?
6.734 quadrillion cubic inches of rain falls on Colorado on average each year. That converts to 346.66 trillion gallons of water. If every person living Colorado used 1,000 gallons per day, every day, it would only account for 0.539% of the total rainfall in the state. 99.46% of the water that falls on Colorado would still enter the (water resource) pipeline as it always has. And yet, how many people do you know who are using 1,000 gallons per day for each family member in their household?
Do you honestly believe everyone elsewhere downstream dies if 0.539% of Colorado’s water is used in-state? And while you’re giving that some thought, do you really think each person in the state uses 1,000 gallons per day?
Look at the absurd run-around process you mentioned to me. And then realize that you or whoever is giving you this information, does not have to live like that.
I live downstream from you. You’ve got my permission to use the full 0.53% of your own water. Tell the Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed, and Barack Obama types to go F off.
I can’t believe the folks up there haven’t given the boot to Colorado officials long before this.
OK....here in Oregon they charge us for the “STORMWATER” that runs to the streets, and down the drains....A lady called into Lars Larson making a great point....if that STORMWATER is NOT OURS, then why are they CHARGING us for its drainage? And, if it belongs to the STATE/CITY/COUNTY....then it is THEIRS to TAKE CARE OF....and they can stop charging us the outrageous rates for stormwater drainage....the majority of our water bills!!!
Tell me this is a joke, nobody i that stupid let alone an administrator of the Oregon Water Resources Department.
Oh wait, never mind he’s a government employee.
Thanks for the post!
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I don’t think he should be jailed, I was just commenting on the complexities of water rights in The West.
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