Two new laws permit Colorado residents to legally collect rainwater. Growing population, drought and declining groundwater have forced Colorado and other states like Arizona and New Mexico to re-examine water laws and encourage people to collect the runoff, Kirk Johnson reports for The New York Times. “I was so willing to go to jail for catching water on my roof and watering my garden,” Tom Bartels, pictured, told Johnson. “But now I’m not a criminal.”(New York Times photo)Initially, laws were enacted to protect the public from exploiting community resources, but a 2007 study found that in an average year 97 percent of the precipitation did not even approach a stream. The old law giving downstream owners water rights “created a kind of wink-and-nod shadow economy. Rain equipment could be legally sold, but retailers said they knew better than to ask what the buyer intended to do with the product.” (Read more)
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