Water rights are far more complicated than that.
In some cases, you are probably right. In others, not at all. I don’t think property owners can shut down a river running through their property that others use as well. I also don’t think anyone should need a permit from government to collect the rainwater that falls on their own land. They must be able to do with that water, what they want. If that means collecting it in storage vats or cisterns to use later on, I have no problem with it and it’s not government or your or my business what tehy do with that water.
I have no problem with people having a number of collection vats that collect rainwater, so that they can use it to water their lawn, process for drinking water, use for crops, wash their vehicles, whatever.
It’s their property, who ever said they had to let the rainwater percolate through their soil if they don’t want it to? It’s their land. It’s falling on THEIR LAND. If they want to save it and use it later, they ought to be able to save it and use it later.
Where is it said they HAVE TO let it go into the soil and they can’t collect any of it WITHOUT A EFFING GOVERNMENT PERMIT OF APPROVAL?!?!?
It’s time for this sh1t to end. Seriously. Here we sit and argue about nuance when we accept we have to be permitted by Big Brother to collect the effing water God pours down on our property. This is how milktoasts like you wind up with having to have a permit to carry a gun when it’s a freaking RIGHT that existed BEFORE THE CONSTITUTION as a God-given human right, not a privilege that government has to grant us and can revoke from us because it’s a permit.