Posted on 12/28/2016 12:48:41 PM PST by Lorianne
Great, now when it floods the good people of Oregon can sue the Medford Water Commission for the damage “their” water caused.
This is the state of Oregon doing this. The normal people left there should move to Texas or Oklahoma or some place not ruled by insane fascists.
This is true, it’s Oregon.
I think in Portland it is illegal to collect rainwater from your roof into rain barrels. So you have to use expensive treated city water for landscape irrigation. Not that you need that much for irrigation but the summers can be dry.
It's a law because liberals have managed to create all powerful bureaucracies out of well intentioned ideas. Over the years they have both assumed and been given the power to create and enforce their own rules.
Come January 20, 2016 this crap is gonna come to a screeching halt. If Trump and his cabinet doesn't do it immediately, he can at least be counted on to give us judges who will support the constitution.
It is amazing the lack of details in the above article. Apparently they did no research on their on ... not even a google.
To quote one of Henry Fonda's characters:
"Just 'cause it's wrote on paper don't make it so."
The government is becoming a water empire, and water is life.
- the county didn’t take issue with the pond until Jon sought to grow legal medical cannabis on the land and had to prove there was a viable source of water for the grow operation
- Besides a trailer home and dilapidated house, the pond is the only thing of value on their acreage, and, obviously, as Sabrina said, “We didn’t buy it for the double-wide.”
- [former owner] Gary Harrington spent 90 days in jail for illegally harboring some 13 million gallons of illicit rainwater — that’s enough rain to fill around 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools
- “1925 state law dictates that the water belongs to the Medford Water Commission.”
So there is a law dating back to 1925 regulating this situation. 1925 was before we had aggressive EPA types trampling on us. So the law may actually have some merit.
Water is a precious resource and there can be genuine problems downstream, so to speak, if a landowner creates an enormous diversion like the previous property owner, Harrington, appears to have done.
Just as the right to free speech has some common-sense limitations (e.g. yelling fire in a crowded theater may not always be a right), the right to "do as you please" with your own property has some common sense limitations too.
Do not let anyone have the water rights on private property. These little dictators need to be kicked out of office and the government agencies abolished. There was a discussion by the Founders to enshrine the right to “life, liberty and property” instead of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They chose the wrong phrase.
Just let a local environmental group know that the county wants to drain a pond that is the only place in the state where the Bearded Purple Salamander or other “endangered” species resides.
Once the “Earth First/Anti-people” take the baton, the county will reverse course on it’s decision.
Remember that liberals are a collection of smaller subgroups that are often at odds with one another. Don’t fight the county yourself, get the libs to fight each other.
Why? How does a city’s reservoirs absorb all the rain in your rainy winters? I mean, a rain barrel in a garden is illegal? Wonder what Jeff would say? I’ll ping him to see if he wants to comment on such silliness.
OOOH! The doors that could open... flood damage, hail damage...
Rain barrels illegal in CO until this past summer... now we can have small barrels.
“1925 state law dictates that the water belongs to the Medford Water Commission.”
They need to get a referendum and have that law abolished through a vote of the people...
Fine.
Block off/divert ingress and egress drainage routes, drain the pond, refill it with purchased water ($$$), and install a filtration system with appropriate overflow controls ($$).
Presto!
Two acre stocked swimming pool. (May need a special use permit due to its size.)
The county water master will then have no more right to regulate rainwater falling onto that pond than any other open air swimming pool in the county.
As for the cost, what are they currently paying in lawyer fees?
Here’s the problem I have with that.
Apparently in Oregon you owned the water on your land until the day this bill passed in 1925.
Unless land owners at that time were compensated (which I highly doubt) this would constitute an illegal taking.
Even in Eminent Domain cases the government is required to cough up fair market value. They can’t just pass a bill and say “all you stuff belong us”.
This sounds like a state power issue. If so, I don’t see any short-term hope for the Careys, corrections, insights welcome.
Just as with the cases of Kelo v. New London and Terri Schiavo, citizens don’t seem to understand that their constitutional rights don’t necessarily protect them from the state governments in the same way that they protect them from the feds.
Citizens need to work with their state lawmakers to make property laws, for example, that are friendlier to citizens.
I can’t help it if Government water is trespassing on my land
It's interesting that the linked article said the local government didn't care about the pond until the owners applied for a license to grow Marijuana and had to show on the application that they had a reliable supply of water. I suspect that what we're seeing is some local crony capitalism going on where the county "water Master" is shielding existing grower(s) from competition.
Here in Texas, people are billed or fined for drawing water from lakes that their property ajoins. The land belongs to you, the water does not.
18 posted on 12/28/2016, 4:01:09 PM by Timpanagos1
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