It is useful to have lots of stupid laws. It makes people feel powerless and frustrated. It means the police can always find excuses to persecute you.
The technicalities of the individual laws are not important. It’s the psychological effect of the whole body of laws on a people.
Rainwater collection laws in the US are based on conservation and fair allocation of a scarce resource.
In places that don’t have scarcity, you actually have the opposite issue, where drainage might be restricted or mandated to prevent issues from harming your neighbors.
I can’t build a dam on my property because it might flood my neighbor. People in the southwest can’t collect water at will because it might dry out their neighbors.
This isn’t as bad as it sounds. Water prevented from reaching the ground in watersheds means groundwater doesn’t get replenished. Now maybe a house here and there collecting rainwater isn’t a problem, but what about Nestle? The law should allow reasonable rainwater collection by individuals or family households while preventing theft of water from a region.
It is useful to have lots of stupid laws. It makes people feel powerless and frustrated. It means the police can always find excuses to persecute you.
How many laws does the US have again?
Well an estimate from 2008 put it at upwards of 4,000 just as federal crimes. Not to even touch on state matters ,tax, civil affronts, etc.
Given the context, this seems more evil than is probably intended.
There are laws about collection and storage of rainwater all over the world unrelated to genocide. Water falling from the sky is the source of aquifers, lakes, and rivers that are important for everyone.
https://youtu.be/QZkSRlIs9o0?si=l7jYk8g92oIS4t3b
The evil part is having laws like this and then filling in their water sources with concrete.
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To add what others said (like Israel making up rules for Palestine), the people of Palestine are being attacked and their infrastructure targeted. It is pretty evil to destroy the water supply and then say: “but you can’t get it elsewhere :)”.
I don’t think this is necessarily the case here, but laws like this are often an attempt to offer the appearance of legitimacy to acts of violence (i.e. “yes we imprisoned them but they broke the law!”).
Water for agricultural and domnestic use usually is fed back to the water cycle, though.
Watering my veggies is distinct from e.g. building a dam, or something.
You could, though, for example, set up a large collection system for water that would normally be fed into a tributary that other farmers are using downstream for irrigation. A company with enough resources to collect and bottle rainwater for profit across a large area that would otherwise feed into aquifers could bleed a small farming community dry.
AFAIK, there is no such laws in Europe. I know for parts of USA and Israel. Correct me if I am wrong.
You are definitely wrong. I work in municipal development and a developer retaining water on site beyond what is necessary to offset their increased impervious cover is something that’s highly discouraged and restricted.
Water need to go to the rivers and aquifers, and damming it up for private use is a real problem.
There are laws about collection and storage of rainwater all over the world unrelated to genocide.
I never seen them before. Too much rainwater is a problem, but not collecting it.
It can be actually. People upstream of water sources - often wealthy people with land but sometimes a collective of local farmers - build dams or retaining ponds to save the water for themselves and on a significant scale can limit the amount of water that goes downstream.
It makes more sense to limit the amount of water collected than to outright banning it tho.
Sometimes.
I work in municipal development and how rainwater is handled is a huge part of my job. It usually comes down to whatever the developer wants is bad.
They either want to collect all water and essentially deny it to everyone else so they can sell it, or they want to pave over everything and refuse to detain stormwater and flood the neighbors.
It’s not at all the same thing as Palestinians wanting water for food and crops, but a lot of the time these laws start out as something sensible before being used as a weapon.
I don’t even… how do you prevent that?
Fines/violence, usually.
It’s actually not uncommon to have laws that restrict gathering rain water in many places. Lots of US states do as well. If water is collected locally on a mass scale, it messes with water tables/rivers/lakes/etc.
Forbidding it when a place doesnt have otherwise dependable water infastructure is inhuman however.
“Rain is the property…”
Wow.
The United States does the same thing all over the Southwest. Rural people will tell you.
It might be the same as Canada where you only can with a permit just to be sure people aren’t drinking mold water
