The Right Scoop
That's so wrong. It's the rain is the stupid government gonna try to stop the rain from falling?
I live in Oregon, and find this somewhat disturbing. To begin with, If the state was really after this guy for that simple reason, then many thousands of landowners in the state are jeopardy because of this. There must be something else going on here.
This is why I thank God everyday that I live in Texas. Here is an excerpt from an article about 2 recent TX Supreme Court rulings, reaffirming property rights to water:
On Feb. 24, 2012, the Texas Supreme Court in Edwards Aquifer Authority
v. Day reaffirmed that groundwater is subject to the same private-property
protections that are afforded to oil and gas, and landowners may seek compensation
if government regulations limit their access to it.
Most publications and news outlets gave the impression that the Edwards
Aquifer Authority v. Day case decided this issue for the first time. In addition
to the 1904 Texas Supreme Court case, though, last year the Texas
Legislature amended section 36.002 of the Water Code to emphasize that “a
landowner owns the groundwater below the surface of the landowner’s land
as real property.”
Two issues were decided with the Day case. The first deals with just compensation.
While the state has the right to limit and restrict your right to
pump your groundwater, you must be compensated if they do so. So while
the state has the right to regulate the use of underground water, the ownership
is a vested property right.
The other question answered was whether groundwater can be owned in
place. In other words, can you pump groundwater and store it while keeping
your ownership interest in it? Using oil-and-gas law as its precedent, the
court ruled it could.
I agree that Texas has better water rights laws than most, but if a Texas property holder did the same thing that this Oregonian did (diverting surface water tributaries that originate on his property and would have run into a river to storage ponds), Texas would also have fined and jailed him too. And probably a crapload faster than 10 years after the violations were noted.
RB, I think you and I took two different messages from this story. I have 400 acres and rain runs off to the lowest place. Be it a drainage ditch, natural creek bed or a pond. Low places in a field will collect water until evaporation or absorption takes place. I did not see anywhere the owner diverted water directly to his ponds, rather it fell there or traveled there as water seeks the lowest possible place as a natural accurance.
They gotta tax this stuff to get money to keep themselves in power so they can pass more stupid laws.
BTW Why aren't the fire-fighting 'agencies' who have used these ponds standing up for the guy and thanking him?
Folks, its time to say freaking....NO. The only way this going stop is if large groups in your county just tell them to go beat the street. That's the only way that I see. They expect us to take it like my mother made me take cold medicine. We're their children. Its time say hey a$$hole, no way no how. This will never stop until folks make some noise!
Education, the environment and healthcare: When government has control of these, they have control of EVERY aspect of your life. There is one glaring exception and that is what you believe. Even in nations that went into and out of Communist rule, the faith of the true believers never faltered. Government can never regulate my soul.
WTF (F=Flip not F---)!!!!!!!!!!! This is pure bull!
PS Epic fail from that woman at the end talking about paying the poor guy a visit in jail.
(And for goodness sake, speaking of the woman, why the flip can't these Fox women cover up!! Its supposed to be a breakfast show right?! Jeeze! How many more men viewers can you gain just by such cheap tricks? We can't be that desperate, surely!!)
Name one thing that any local,county or state Government ,, has done to enhance our Private Property Rights .
Well, if you aren't concerned about losing the property by crime or invasion, then they've created the context in which your property rights exist.
Private Property rights are government created. Without a sovereign, there are no private property rights.
I have private property rights with or without a sovereign. They come in various calibers.
Here in NC, 20 years ago I purchased a house that had a well on the property. This is one of the main reasons for my purchase. Well (pun intended) there was also a city water line running down my rural road. Guess what? The health department deemed the well as a health hazard and made the property owner fill it in with concrete the day before closing.
This isn't happening just one the west coast. I had no choice in the matter, I was given no forum to appeal it. It was done without my knowledge until after the deed was done. This wasn't an open well. It was like any other modern well.
What it boils down to is the County can not make a profit off your water if your getting it from the ground. Also, you tell me how dumping concrete into a well is NOT a health hazard? As you can tell, 20 years later I'm still pissed about it. The only thing I wanted it for was watering the yard, garden, washing cars, etc. I had no intent to disconnect the county water. But nobody asked me.
Was thinking the other day, how to get rid of 0zeroism/Marxist infiltration. We could start by firing every government worker hired since 2009 in the DoE, EPA, OSHA and so many more useless or oppressive taxpayer funded abominations, as a prelude to closing them down. Gotta start somewhere.
Not in Oregon. They worship the earth there. I mean that literally, whether they realize it or not.
Oregon has one of the most idiotic governments on the planet. I'm not even stretching to say that as I lived there for 34 years. They have no idea the effect of their policies, and the people in the major population areas are in too much of a marijuana-induced stupor to realize what's happening to them. It's kind of like living on board that space ship in the movie Wall-E.
There are so many situations arising these days where, if you know what to look for and listen for, you can see how marijuana-warped-thought plays in decisions people and groups of people are making. Anytime you see thought or action slipping just a few degrees off rational, drugs are involved. How can society have lasted and evolved over thousands of years and suddenly punish a man for collection of rainwater?
Get used to it folks. And for those of you who either use its recreational or condone it's use because, "you don;t get a hang-over," you have no concept of the actual costs. A hang-over is ten time more preferable that the long term effects of widespread marijuana use. It is sickening.
So true, and the facts are coming out about it. My Uncle, a true Oregonian, has used marijuana for years and he has significant short-term memory loss.
That memory loss, I think you hit it on the head. Memory is where we store those tiny lessons we learn everyday, those insights into people and parties and platforms where something doesn't feel right etc, etc.
Marijuana will destroy a society. and those whose lose it will never be able to remember what they lost.
Stay home and get drunk. The next day, the very next day and not one minute later, you WILL remember why you don't drink.
This law would be completely unnecessary if the entire river was privately owned, since it would be up to the individuals who own the river, consulting with each other, what rules there are for said river. If they want to allow people to collect water from tributaries, then that's what people can do.
The problem is when the river or parts of the river are public, since nobody would own it, but everyone would have a right to it, and it all gets very complicated.
Really, what people should be advocating for is complete privatization of rivers, and the abolition of laws relating to rivers.
I know this isn't actually an issue about a river, but I thought I'd just put that out there, since the law itself is wrong in the first place, and it would be nice to have a national discussion on the complete privatization of land, sea, rivers and air.
"The problem is when the river or parts of the river are public, since nobody would own it, but everyone would have a right to it, and it all gets very complicated."
You have no idea about the legal framework for water in this country.
"Really, what people should be advocating for is complete privatization of rivers, and the abolition of laws relating to rivers."
This is one of the most spectacularly useless proposals I've ever heard, since you completely fail to understand water rights as they currently stand. For any surface water in the US, every drop of that water is under the control of privately and publicly held water rights.
Water rights are old laws, but throwing them out will bring every farmer and rancher and other ag entrepreneur that went through the trouble of legally securing their access to your door with torches and pitchforks.
Pretty much all water in the US is covered by water rights, and most of those water rights are privately owned. It is very possible that existing water rights law could be improved, but at horrific cost and complication.
Quote: "You have no idea about the legal framework for water in this country."
Yes, and that's a major problem because it shows how non-objective the laws are in this country. We need objective law so that everyone knows what is illegal, why it's illegal and what will be the penalty for violation, without needing to pay a team of lawyers to understand it all.
Quote: "Pretty much all water in the US is covered by water rights, and most of those water rights are privately owned. It is very possible that existing water rights law could be improved, but at horrific cost and complication."
No, just privatize the whole bloody lot of it. Private property is a concept which works GREAT when tried. There should be NO public property in this matter. The government should merely be a custodian (not the owner) over anything which isn't privately owned, until someone creates value with it and thus private property.
"Water rights"? - There are no such things in reality. There are ONLY the unalienable individual rights of man. Your so-called water rights are merely PRIVILEGES granted by government. I do not support that at all. I only support the individual rights of man.
1. "for some problems, the only legal framework that works has a minimum necessary complexity. Water's essential nature for life and business along with its ability to move around creates complication for law-makers."
That's great reasoning for why government should NOT be involved in legislating over it at all, since government is incompetent at even the simplest things, and so when it comes to complex systems such as that, it should keep its destructively-meddlesome tentacles as far away from it as possible.
A free market (ie. free from goverment) is the best way to run complex systems such as that, since a free market comprises the minds of every single individual (the more minds the better), all of whom have a stake in the outcome of that system, and all of whom have the right kind of incentives (such as the profit motive) to ensure that resources (such as water) are allocated and run in the most efficient and most productive manner possible.
So in regards to objective law - Yes, it should be bloody obvious to people, because when laws are obvious then people won't accidentally become criminals, and people will have certainty when it comes to running their businesses and personal lives. The best way to achieve this is to base law on the principle of unalienable individual rights, and thus make it objective law since said principle is objectively true and valid.
2. "I'm sympathetic to the desire for simplicity in law, but if you think about how you might organize ownership of water in a region, I think all of your proposals will either create little hydraulic empires or be fairly complex."
People are self-interested, and so people organizing scarce resources, such as water (a river, for example), will seek (in their own self-interesT) the simplest, most effective and most prosperous arrangement. Government is the one that is motivated (in its own self-interest, rather than the interests of the individuals involved) to constantly expand its controls and laws/regulations over anything that it can get its power-hungry tentacles on to; you will always see this never-ending 'law/regulation inflation' when government is involved.
3. "So there should never be an interest in a municipality in creating a safe municipal water supply? I know for a fact that if you look at private water supplies in this country and elsewhere, you'll find that they are much more expensive and lower quality than the typical public water supply. Unregulated private utilities have historically been horrifically bad news for their customers. Another example of a kind of market that is very poorly served by entirely private interests."
Firstly, there is plenty of interest in creating privately marketable water to customers willing to purchase it. The profit motive is incredibly strong for this.
Secondly, where there are instances where private water is more expensive than the public water, it will be because of multiple factors brought about by government involvement, or as I call it "sabotage" of the private market.
So you want to set up and then run a water company to sell water to people? Ok, well you have to...
1. Spend loads of money complying with an ever-increasing number of increasingly-burdensome regulations
2. Spend loads of money paying high taxes
3. Spend loads of money on litigation (especially after the EPA and who knows what/who else sues you)
4. Compete with a government which undercuts your market share (taking your customers); a government which can make a loss when providing water, since it doesn't need to be profitable
... And so on and so on.
Unregulated private utilities have historically been horrifically bad news for customers?? What?? Are we living in 1787 where there are no regulations? When is this apparent golden age of "unregulated" private utilities?? It isn't this or even the last century, I can tell you that.
"There should be NO public property in this matter."
Whoops, forgot this. So there should never be an interest in a municipality in creating a safe municipal water supply? I know for a fact that if you look at private water supplies in this country and elsewhere, you'll find that they are much more expensive and lower quality than the typical public water supply. Unregulated private utilities have historically been horrifically bad news for their customers. Another example of a kind of market that is very poorly served by entirely private interests.
"Yes, and that's a major problem because it shows how non-objective the laws are in this country. We need objective law so that everyone knows what is illegal, why it's illegal and what will be the penalty for violation, without needing to pay a team of lawyers to understand it all."
Objective? I think you misspelled "obvious". You want the law to be obvious. I sympathize with your desire, and agree that in many cases the law should be simpler, but for some problems, the only legal framework that works has a minimum necessary complexity. Water's essential nature for life and business along with its ability to move around creates complication for law-makers.
""Water rights"? - There are no such things in reality. There are ONLY the unalienable individual rights of man. Your so-called water rights are merely PRIVILEGES granted by government. I do not support that at all. I only support the individual rights of man."
Access to property and the exclusive right to develop property recorded in deeds and subject to trespass laws are also privileges granted by government. All property rights are "merely PRIVILEGES granted by government". Again, I'm sympathetic to the desire for simplicity in law, but if you think about how you might organize ownership of water in a region, I think all of your proposals will either create little hydraulic empires or be fairly complex.
In the absence of a sovereign strong enough to define and defend property rights, the only individual rights you have are those that you are willing and able to fight for. Frequently. While I am mostly prepared for social instability and interruptions in commerce, I strongly prefer a context that allows for commerce, specialization, medicine, safe travel, and all that jazz. I have no romantic fantasies about life in a survival situation. It will be bad, very bad, and our first order of business will be to rebuild civilization.
Remember when America was America? You know, before the Progressive "disease" got into the system. Now a man can't even collect God's rain water without getting fined and jailed. I want to know what Liberals (real, old school ones, agree with this insane progressive "control every aspect of people's lives") think. Surely, even they can see the writing on the wall now?
Many progressives, especially in government, are too lazy to read. Ex: Health Care Bill!
Rain, hail, hurricanes, tornadoes, they are all listed under 'acts of God' on insurance policies. Oh, I forgot, Obama say's there is no higher power than the government.
Maybe the insurance companies should offer up a new type of policy, the one to cover against "stupidity enacted by government"! The Dems and some Reps in congress have been trying to take over ALL sources of water, no matter where they lie, for a long time. Californians have been fighting these water wars for a long long time. At this time the newest fight is over ground water pumping. The government now wants to deny people the right to pump on their own property without permiting and red tape the likes of which would put most farming in the dumpster. Much less any consideration for fire suppression, drinking water, or anything else. It's all about centralization of CONTROL OF ALL RESOURCES.
I like John Bolton too. He's been there before and knows what goes on there, so would be a logical choice to do it.!! Then Sec. of State, that would be a full dance card for him. Perfect, p m !
Totally agree, freenca, that's why I like John Bolton for that job before they appoint him Secretary of State.
And didn't some news hack say that obama was "...almost god-like." Whoa, not even close. He and some of his followers might think so, but he's not even close.
No, no, no, you didn't build that business and God didn't make that rain, Government did.
Check the dates on the laws in question. Most of them predate the formation of the USA. This guy ran squarely into a water rights conflict, probably by not securing the water rights to the surface water on his property before diverting it into those ponds.
Someone else asked the State of Oregon to enforce the law and they're doing it. If you expect cops to come and arrest tresspassers, you shouldn't be too surprised that they're willing to enforce these laws too.
The last one was in 1972 and amended in 2011. The amendment was meant to protect citizens like this one. The water isn't used for commerce therefor it's a 'water' grab. Commies taking people's water.
Your argument doesn't hold water (that's good, I guess, since someone else would sue you if it did). If this guy plants corn on his property, then it rains on that corn, he would be depriving his downhill neighbors the right to that water since the corn took it. You keep talking about him diverting waterways. Show me where he did that.
Now you're starting to catch on. It's not just some general 'water rights' comment anymore. Good. You're learning.
Quick googling of rainwater harvesting in Oregon reveals that you're only allowed to harvest rainwater that falls on your rooftop without a water rights claim. Presumeably, water collected from any structure on your property would be covered. One other detail, if you want to retain more than 5000 gallons, you'll need a permit for the cachement you want to use.
Diverting a tributary means that water used to flow from his property into the Big Butte River but now does not because he dammed it and diverted it into his ponds. I never said that he diverted water that flowed through his property, only water that flowed on it. Which is exactly what's happening. Without properly obtaining permission to restrict the flow of that water, he has stolen from the downstream rights holders.
Case closed, he broke the law and is now paying the price.
All water rights are not the same. You can't just say 'water rights' and make it all encompassing. they are different across the nation for different areas. They specifically said he was not diverting any streams and that he was being sued for diverting tributaries. So, please, either show us the water right he is violating or stop generalizing.
Water rights allow for things like the water being absorbed by the soil or being immediately used by plants on the soil.
From the article above:
"The short of it is that an Oregon man has a ponds that collect rain water that runs down into his ponds from his land."
He's describing catchment of surface water. Which definitely runs afoul of water rights.
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