Put the water down and no one will get hurt

Here's another cycle of three, gang, and it involves the mother of all chemical bonds: H-2-O.

Item the First: we did some recreational plumbing and created quite a display here at Meanwhile Manor. We call our installation "Water on a Perch."


Check back for a very detailed—i.e., possible boring—post on the creation of said plumbing contraption. The purpose of this project was to collect rainwater for the garden and flowers. The barrels are all connected and there is a hose attached that goes off to the veggie beds. We worked on it the entire 4th of July weekend. The date stands out because it hasn't rained since and all these barrels sit empty. I believe Poseidon must be giggling his gills off. We hustled to get all the pipes connected and checked for leaks for what? For three solid weeks of nothing but sun. Remind me of this whining when I'm sobbing about being soggy during the winter.

Items that overlap the First: I'm reading Bottlemania, a pleasant little tome about the privatization of water. If you think the battles over oil are a little extreme, just wait a smidge longer for the water wars, gang. Humans can't live without water. So why do we allow corporations to own it? I can own this piece of land but, Mr. Nestlé, what happens when your well over there sucks our common aquifer dry? Do I have any recourse? How far underground does the law reach? Is it actually "my" water in the aquifer that you have stolen/borrowed/slapped a label on and sold? What are the surrounding towns going to do when the public water tower is dry and you have all the water sitting in little plastic bottles, available for over twenty times the price?

I'm eagerly waiting for my barrels to fill while I ponder the moral tangle that is the right to not be thirsty. I'm feeling all righteous with my bad ol' self. I'm waiting for a drizzle in which I can do a happy dance. I'm calculating just what it is I will be collecting: the Monolith garage is about 30x30 feet and one inch of rain results in 561 gallons of water coming off that roof. Gee, if I only had a barrel to store it in. Well, I now have five barrels and see the system increasing to 12 barrels for reasons of symmetry and volume. The T then brought this article to my attention and therein lies the rub.

Item the Third: Washington state has an "archaic" law that is poorly defined and may result in my next posting coming from the Big House, thanks to my barrels. From the state Dept. of Ecology site:

• (link) The waters of Washington State collectively belong to the public and cannot be owned by any one individual or group. Instead, individuals or groups may be granted rights to use them. A water right is a legal authorization to use a predefined quantity of public water for a designated purpose. This purpose must qualify as a beneficial use. Beneficial use involves the application of a reasonable quantity of water to a non-wasteful use, such as irrigation, domestic water supply, or power generation, to name a few. An average household uses about 300 gallons of water per day.

• (link) Washington State, like most of the rest of the western United States follows the Prior Appropriation Doctrine, the major tenet being first in time, first in right. State law defines water resources as “all water above, upon, or beneath the surface of the earth, located within the state.” RCW 43.27A.020. Rainwater is therefore legally considered a water resource of the State.

Where things really get fuzzy is when you ask "how much water can I collect to stay off the radar of The Man?" At what point do I go from doing a resourceful thing that is within my rights because it is beneficial to committing a crime because the water belongs to the state? Is it the addition of the sixth barrel that will bring the authorities? Granted, the measurement may be different for me here just east of the Hoh Rainforest than it is for the farmers in central Washington where the land is irrigable only because of the Columbia River. I see now the difficulty in writing a single state law when the state is split like Sybil.


Well, I'm off to check the forecast. Other link(s) for your perusal:
HarvestH2O