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Rain Barrels are great ways to reclaim water from an impervious surface and save it for some other use. Usually situated underneath a downspout from your roof, rain barrels hold water for drinking, watering your garden, doing laundry, and pretty much anything else requiring water on demand. You can even design and build a big enough system that will collect and hold enough water for you to go off the grid!
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" Colorado Water Law requires that precipitation fall to the ground, run off and into the river of the watershed where it fell. Because rights to water are legally allocated in this state, an individual may not capture and use water to which he/she does not have a right. We must remember also that rain barrels don’t help much in a drought because a drought by its very nature supplies little in the way of snow or rain."
Another issue we have (here in central Texas) is that certain companies and power and water companies are looking to privatise well water! That is put a meter on your well and charge you extra for having thier name on it! Something like second party ...whatever.. Anyways, rain barrels and rain colection system are a big deal here as of late. We even have a bottling company whos slogan is "Freshly Squeezed Cloud Juice" !!!!
Our game warden is the one who checks on things of this nature. That dude has some real authority!!!
I guess that when a flood happens or water damage occurs from the rain then the entitie(s) whom own the water rights can be held liable and sued as they are the responsible party since they own the water and rights to it and failed to manage it properly. OOP's I forgot they call that an act of nature in the USA (hmm) >>> Just Say'n.... ;-)
Yep... in a handbasket...
CAN YOU DO THIS WITH YOUR TAP WATER? from JOSHFOX on Vimeo.
In most areas, rain barrels and other efforts to keep rainwater from getting to storm drains (bioretention buffer strips, infiltration swales, etc.) reduce the peak flow in local streams, which in turn can have a tangible impact on the quality of habitat found in local urban suburban streams.
As I stated above, in urban areas, you have severely reduced infiltration and storage in ground water due to impervious surfaces. Collecting rain water that would otherwise be dumped straight into the ocean through storm sewers will reduce the burden on the drinking water distribution network, by creating distributed storage of otherwise wasted water. Water barrels in rural areas would have such a small impact on aquifer recharge, by nature of their sparse distribution, it's not really worth considering.
When the laws were created, no one anticipated that small residential property owners would want to capture runoff for personal use.