Got a Bucket Handy?

by: Colorado Pols

Tue Jun 30, 2009 at 08:07:12 AM MDT

For the first time since territorial days, rain will be free for the catching here, as more and more thirsty states part ways with one of the most entrenched codes of the West.

Precipitation, every last drop or flake, was assigned ownership from the moment it fell in many Western states, making scofflaws of people who scooped rainfall from their own gutters. In some instances, the rights to that water were assigned a century or more ago.

Now two new laws in Colorado will allow many people to collect rainwater legally. The laws are the latest crack in the rainwater edifice, as other states, driven by population growth, drought, or declining groundwater in their aquifers, have already opened the skies or begun actively encouraging people to collect.

"I was so willing to go to jail for catching water on my roof and watering my garden," said Tom Bartels, a video producer here in southwestern Colorado, who has been illegally watering his vegetables and fruit trees from tanks attached to his gutters. "But now I'm not a criminal."

Technically the law doesn't take effect until tomorrow, so Mr. Bartels might have waited a day or two before posing for the New York Times. We're joking, nobody's going to bust the guy--this was a holdover from the bad old days of "water is for fightin'" disputes in Colorado, rendered silly by the passage of time. There's nothing wrong with watering your Victory Garden with your roof, Kansas and Nestle won't miss it.

It does illustrate pretty clearly, however, what John McCain stepped in last fall by casually asserting that the Colorado River Compact "obviously needs to be renegotiated." Good idea to have a Secret Service detail in front of you when you say that to a guy who can't legally catch rainwater in a bucket.