Colorado used to disallow collection of rainwater too because people further down the line supposedly had the rights to that water.
You're now allowed something like 2 - 30 gallon barrels to collect it here now.
Water rights are the opposite of late stage capitalism. It's silly to enforce when we're talking about a residential rain barrel, but when we're talking on much larger scales is critical. When creeks are drying up because landowners are building catchment ponds, water rights start to look pretty good.
It's because Colorado water law is based on 'prior appropriations'.
Colorado was settled around mining and ranching, both of which can be water-intensive. It's also a fairly dry place. Water rights have been serious business for a long time.
So the rule was that the first person there had the right to start using river water for their mine. Then, if a second person starts a mine upstream, they had the right to use river water only inasmuch as it didn't impact the prior downstream mine. If there was a drought, the upstream mine had to use less water so the earlier mine wasn't impacted. Rain barrels were prohibited because that water "belonged" to some downstream rights holder, just as using the water from a stream might be prohibited because it belongs to a downstream rights holder.
This isn't really late-stage capitalism. The law in Colorado goes back to some court cases in the 1870s and 1880s.
It's unfortunate that you have like four up votes for explaining the actual History behind it but the guy who just thinks it's an issue that popped up ten years ago has dozens.
I'm not sure how upvotes are relevant here considering the time difference between both comments is about 11 hours.
Also, how much does the ratio of ups and downvotes on a post or comment influences your thought on the subject matter?
Yeah, but Colorado isn't a desert where people struggle for clean water in the best of times...
And I'm pretty sure the only thing downstream of Gaza is the ocean
Doesn't Gaza rain dump into th ocean? It's not like Israel is using the runoff.
I call gencide shenanigans.
It's kind of late-stage capitalism since Marx declared capitalism to be in its late stage back in 1860
Well, I mean, it isn't entirely illogical... If I lived somewhere that always got approximately the same amount of water year over year but then suddenly my neighbor started straight up "stealing it all" straight out of the sky I might would be pissed too.
Sometimes you have to think about broad impact when developing policy. Sure, laws against rain collection seem draconian on the individual scale, but if a large percentage of the population collected rainwater, reservoirs and water tables can be seriously affected. Not saying this specific Israeli action is justified, but there are valid limitations on water collection put in place to ensure everyone has access.
It would be substantially worse if there were no such limitations in place, and whoever owned the land that drained into communal reservoirs could privately control the water supply of a region.
It would be substantially worse if there were no such limitations in place, and whoever owned the land that drained into communal reservoirs could privately control the water supply of a region.
It would be fucking Nestlé again
"Everything I dislike is late stage capitalism, and I dislike anything I don't understand"
You better watch out what you use your allotted amount of air for or you may not be granted another ration next week.
Shit happened to jewish people. Israel is made up of zionists.
It's an important distinction, which zionists want us to ignore.
the frustrating nauseating dance of "please don't think I'm racist" has gotten even older over the past month
Like it's hard to spot a bigot in the first place. It's not antisemitic to conflate Israel and Jews until the equivocation is central to your thinking.
Conflating support for Palestinians as antisemitic or pro-Hamas is just bad-faith nonsense made up by people who don't care about being coherent, but are too timid to just go ahead and use the slurs.
It's illegal or highly fined in a lot of other countries as well. (Especially during dry seasons)
In other countries they don't cut you off from water infrastructure either though. Context is important.
Israel provides 13% of water. Hamas is responsible for the rest. They just build bombs with the water pipes instead.
They have the PLO there and no siege. A/B areas are not under this law since they're not under Israeli rule.
Except whenever the settlements decide to expand they bring Israeli laws with them. Which is 100 percent a war crime. Or an act of war if you want to pretend the West Bank is a separate country not under occupation.
Those expansions of land and laws are into C areas, which is by the Oslo accords the property of Israel. Now, you can question the legitimacy of the C areas as stated by Oslo, but those terms were agreed upon by the PLO and Israel. It's a fucked up situation that Israel gets most of the uninhabited land, but that's what's been agreed to by both parties. If the peace talks would've continued and Rabin wouldn't have been murdered, and the Intifada wouldn't have happened, maybe those C area settlements' expansions wouldn't have happened.
Israel has long ago broken any accord they made with Palestine. Those agreements were predicated on respecting the sovereignty of Palestine and the decades long blockade and occupation of anywhere they want to be means that accord is dead.
You don't get to ignore a treaty while demanding the other party respect it.
(copied from other comment)
That's atrocious. In your own property, no one else is going to collect it. That's different from maing huge pipes and drainage systems over the city, just collecting what would otherwise be on your driveway or patio.
It's one of those things that sounds dumb at first glance, but actually has a lot of sound reasoning behind it, read up on it more if you're interested
People take it to the logical extreme by converting large tracts in water catching systems. Not an issue if a few do it but it usually isn't just a few. It starts depleting aquifers and rivers, causing damage to the ecosystem and communities down the way. Doesn't even need to be water scarce areas either.
Okay so let’s say a million acres get turned into above ground kiddie pools. These people collect and store as much water as they can, so it’s like a million acres times day ten feet deep.
How much of an effect is that water going to have on the surrounding hydrology, being trapped on those properties?
Well, it would amount to about 224 days of average flow of the Colorado River in a given year. So that would probably affect things quite a bit.
Okay, so how close is the actual amount being collected, to a million acres times ten feet deep?
Do you think it’s ten percent of that? Is everyone with an acre keeping the equivalent of a foot of water on their property?
It's not sanitary, depletes water tables under the earth that naturally filter water as it sinks through the soil, and is not efficient for collection if servicing a large population.
OP is simply spreading pro Hamas propaganda
According to the Anything Goes Act of 2022, you are allowed to say whatever horseshit you want and it is a legit argument.
Candy bars? Nuclear death sticks from planet Zorb
Want fries with that? You’re an antisemite. That’ll be $5.87
Collecting rainwater? You’re a Hamas agent and everybody knows it
Who knows? Maybe someone should ask the Israeli government instead of assuming without facts.
If you ask me, I think it's to control where people can drink safe quality water so they can spend less money on humanitarian aid curing easily preventable stagnating water-bourne diseases and shift that same money over to war production against Hamas instead.
I think Hamas wants Israel to stretch its defense budget as thin as possible by deliberately creating humanitarian disasters in Gaza so that Israel can't spend it on military equipment against Hamas.
Hamas is only in Gaza. This is a West Bank thing where the Israeli government imposing it's own civil laws is a war crime.
I mean, you're right that there is an organization terrorizing West Bank. They are also terrorizing Gaza. And a lot of what they are doing serves as pro-Hamas propaganda.
Fuck the Israeli government 100%, but it's illegal to collect rainwater in certain US cities, too.
But nobody restricts your regular water supply to less than half of what is considered the bare minimum by the UN.
But that's not what's highlighted in your meme.
Be angry at the right things. As long as they keep convincing us to be angry at scarecrows the status quo won't change.
but it's illegal to collect rainwater in certain US cities, too.
What do you want to tell me with that?
Damn what are cops going to do, confiscate my buckets? Did you know it's possible to make a diy bucket by melting down ar-15s? You can buy people and harvested organs from the dark web so chances are you can get buckets on there too. Become ungovernable.
Same for a lot of places.
Israel wouldn't bother enforcing it when they can just blow up your house and say you're Hamas.
In Los Angeles foreigners don't break your access to water infrastructure and call the army on you when you attempt to fix it.
LA county doesn't divert the money and materials slated for water treatment plants on bombs and rockets like Hamas does either which is super helpful in getting water to citizens.
That’s so strange to me. Living in Australia, we face very similar periodic drought conditions that California faces as well. Rather than being discouraged from capturing rainwater to use, we’re actively encouraged to do so, with many governments previously offering subsidies for rainwater tanks particularly during drought times. We have specific colourings for rainwater taps (purple) and you can buy signs to put up in your yard that say that you use rainwater, so people don’t get mad if you’re watering your lawn. These subsidies were usually alongside heavy water restrictions including not being able to water lawns; not watering plants during daylight hours; not using a hose to wash your car (a pressure washer from a bucket is allowed) etc.
That's atrocious. In your own property, no one else is going to collect it. That's different from maing huge pipes and drainage systems over the city, just collecting what would otherwise be on your driveway or patio.
I hope domestic needs includes drinking.
Please don't drink rain water. It's not safe for human consumption. Plants will be ok, you will not be.
I mean... you know we have filtration technology right?
You don't drink raw water out of an unclear well or even clear river either bruh
I slurp it straight out of the gutter, leaves and all.
Cometely unrelated but something is wriggling inside my eyeball.
Of course.
How many people in Gaza right now have access to a reverse osmosis filter?
Oh in that case I'm sure they would all prefer to die of dehydration instead of drinking slightly contaminated rainwater.
Because it must be equally as bad as all the sewage ground water.
You can distill water with a hole in the ground, a tarp, a coffee can, and a small stone to hold down the center of the tarp.
You can distill your urine this way if it comes to that.
Simply boiling the water is enough to kill most harmful microorganisms that might be in the water.
Of course it is safe. It can contain dust and other particles (nowadays mainly some PFAS), but rainwater itself is quite safe.
Of course if you collect it from your gutters it's probably dirty from the crap on your roof.
