Colorado used to disallow collection of rainwater too because people further down the line supposedly had the rights to that water.
You’re now allowed something like 2 - 30 gallon barrels to collect it here now.
Water rights are the opposite of late stage capitalism. It’s silly to enforce when we’re talking about a residential rain barrel, but when we’re talking on much larger scales is critical. When creeks are drying up because landowners are building catchment ponds, water rights start to look pretty good.
It’s because Colorado water law is based on ‘prior appropriations’.
Colorado was settled around mining and ranching, both of which can be water-intensive. It’s also a fairly dry place. Water rights have been serious business for a long time.
So the rule was that the first person there had the right to start using river water for their mine. Then, if a second person starts a mine upstream, they had the right to use river water only inasmuch as it didn’t impact the prior downstream mine. If there was a drought, the upstream mine had to use less water so the earlier mine wasn’t impacted. Rain barrels were prohibited because that water “belonged” to some downstream rights holder, just as using the water from a stream might be prohibited because it belongs to a downstream rights holder.
This isn’t really late-stage capitalism. The law in Colorado goes back to some court cases in the 1870s and 1880s.
It’s unfortunate that you have like four up votes for explaining the actual History behind it but the guy who just thinks it’s an issue that popped up ten years ago has dozens.
Sometimes you have to think about broad impact when developing policy. Sure, laws against rain collection seem draconian on the individual scale, but if a large percentage of the population collected rainwater, reservoirs and water tables can be seriously affected. Not saying this specific Israeli action is justified, but there are valid limitations on water collection put in place to ensure everyone has access.
It would be substantially worse if there were no such limitations in place, and whoever owned the land that drained into communal reservoirs could privately control the water supply of a region.
“Everything I dislike is late stage capitalism, and I dislike anything I don’t understand”
Shit happened to jewish people. Israel is made up of zionists.
It’s an important distinction, which zionists want us to ignore.
the frustrating nauseating dance of “please don’t think I’m racist” has gotten even older over the past month
It’s illegal or highly fined in a lot of other countries as well. (Especially during dry seasons)
In other countries they don’t cut you off from water infrastructure either though. Context is important.
Israel provides 13% of water. Hamas is responsible for the rest. They just build bombs with the water pipes instead.
(copied from other comment)
That’s atrocious. In your own property, no one else is going to collect it. That’s different from maing huge pipes and drainage systems over the city, just collecting what would otherwise be on your driveway or patio.
It’s one of those things that sounds dumb at first glance, but actually has a lot of sound reasoning behind it, read up on it more if you’re interested
Fuck the Israeli government 100%, but it’s illegal to collect rainwater in certain US cities, too.
But nobody restricts your regular water supply to less than half of what is considered the bare minimum by the UN.
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Very little good about Israel these days.