Who Owns The Rain? In Utah, Not You!

well if your jurisdiction has water rights and you don't own them, then you can't very well use that water then. Pretty simple. I own the water rights to my property, so I can do as I please. My uncle sold the natural gas rights under his farm, so he no longer has any rights to that even on his own property (because the natural gas is no longer his property). If this is simply an issue of buying the water rights, as expensive as they may be, then it's really no issue, is it?

I live in Utah and we have some really weird Irrigation laws. All of these problems stem from the fact that we live in the middle of a desert and people insist on having things like lawns and raising cattle. Because of this, we've developed a large variety of strange and stringent irrigation laws. My grandmother lives in an older part of town (Salt Lake City) that has open irrigation channels in it. She diverted some of the running water for her large garden and when the public works people noticed a drop in the volume somewhere downstream, she was fined. Apparently she didn't have water rights even though it was flowing through her back yard. Fun times in Utah...

so is there a reason you can't meter your water intake and sewer output separately?

So did that guy just basically say it's ok for the 'little fish' to break the law, but not the 'big fish'? What is gray water? How could the big fish harm anyone?

This is sick. Absolute religious sickness.