I was reading the New York Times the other day when I came across an article about how it is now legal to capture rainwater on your property in Colorado (link below.) Apparently, up until now, it was illegal to capture rainwater in Colorado and it still is illegal in many areas in the Western United States.  This was because it was assumed that the water needed go into the rivers where the water would be captured by a centralizing power for agricultural use and city expansion. Water management was legislated to be controlled by a centralized system that would capture and pipe water great distances, the water could be regulated, moderated and monetized.  It was believed that most of the water that fell on the ground ended up in the groundwater or in rivers, so in the end it would be found and utilized by this centralized system.

Well, like much of the assumptions of the last 150 years that led to such command and control systems, the assumptions were wrong.  Much of the rainwater that fell was actually lost and not captured, so the brave soul who went out to by rain capturing water tanks and pipes to harvest the rain that fell from the sky to water their gardens, was actually doing the right thing.  It is clear that much of what has been centralized in the last century – energy production, food production, and water capture and distribution – needs to be decentralized in order to create a sane and sustainable world.  The need to control resources only benefits the few, not the many, and needlessly damages the environment too.

So I say harvest the water that falls on your house, harvest the sun that falls on your roof and harvest food that you can grow even in a window-box of a city apartment.  It helps connect you to the cycles of life and it also helps alleviate an ailing system that will look to you for direction once it totally falls apart.

Article on the Legalization of Rain Capture
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/us/29rain.html