A Colorado Watershed

Constituents had been complaining, state senator Jim Isgar says. Water shortages are chronic throughout most of Colorado, so that municipal delivery systems have trouble satisfying demand. Yet collecting the storm water running off your roof to irrigate a garden or supplement the household supply made you a criminal. Enforcement personnel weren't seeking out offenders, Isgar insists, but if you were cited, a rain barrel set beneath your downspout could earn you a $500 fine. Two barrels, two fines. As chair of the Agriculture, Natural Resources & Energy Committee and a rancher, Isgar has experienced both the public and private aspects of this issue. He concluded that such a blanket ban on storm water harvesting didn't make sense. Legislation he sponsored and helped to pass this spring, Senate Bill #80, will make collecting storm water legal, at least in some situations. With carefully defined limitations, residential users who do not have access to a public water supply may now supplement or substitute such harvested water for the amount that state regulations would allow them to draw from a private well. This may seem like a minor victory, but it is one environmental activists have been demanding for some time. They've ridiculed the ban as evidence of entrenched greed and bureaucratic backwardness...HuffingtonPost