Eeyore's News and View

Scary this person is a Supreme Court Justice and sadly it is not the one retiring.
May 04, 2009
Scalia: You Can Invade My Privacy—but I Don't Have to Like It
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn't think you have a right to privacy in most aspects of your life. But he doesn't care to have his own privacy invaded—although he admits it's perfectly legal.
Back in January, Scalia spoke at a privacy conference organized by the Institute of American and Talmudic Law. While his speech wasn't recorded (apparently at his own insistence), one of his remarks was a statement to the effect:
"Every single datum about my life is private? That's silly." Some information should remain private, "but it doesn't include what groceries I buy."
Scalia also said he wasn't bothered by anyone tracking him on the Internet. "I don't find that particularly offensive…I don't find it a secret what I buy, unless it's shameful."
Taking a cue from Scalia's remarks, Fordham Law Professor Joel Reidenberg decided to give the students in his Information Privacy Law class a special assignment: find everything they could about Scalia on the Internet, and compile a dossier on him. Among other findings, students discovered Scalia's home address and home phone number, his wife's personal e-mail address, and his food and entertainment preferences.
Scalia's reaction wasn't surprising. He didn't like having this information published. Said Scalia:
It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg's exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.
Well, well. Nothing like being dressed down by a Supreme Court justice!
But perhaps Justice Scalia should give the matter some more consideration. Not everything that should remain private, for instance, is shameful. Your bank account transaction data may not be shameful (well, perhaps it is…), but that doesn't mean anyone should be able to view it. Nor is your Social Security number shameful—but it's not a good idea to broadcast it to potential identity thieves.
Still, the most revealing portraits come from not just one or two data points, but the aggregation of volumes of data, all freely available to anyone who cares to gather it. Taken together, this information paints a remarkably detailed portrait of "you." And it's perfectly legal to compile, even if, as the good Justice Scalia reminds us, the person gathering it, or using it, may be exercising "bad judgment."
Copyright © 2009 by Mark Nestmann
http://www.sovereignsociety.com/

Why, unless it is about control
Documents: Paulson forced 9 bank CEOs to take TARP
May 14, 2009 - 9:08am By SARA LEPRO AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - The chief executives of the country's nine largest banks had no choice but to accept capital infusions from the Treasury Department in October, government documents released Wednesday have confirmed.
Obtained and released by Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan educational foundation, the documents revealed "talking points" used by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson during the October 13 meeting between federal officials and the executives that stressed the investments would be required "in any circumstance," whether the banks found them appealing or not.
Paulson also told the bankers it would not be prudent to opt out of the program because doing so "would leave you vulnerable and exposed."
It's no secret that some of the banks had to be pressured to participate in the program, with several bank CEOs saying they had been strongly encouraged to take the funds. But the documents are the first proof of the government's insistence.
"These documents show our government exercising unrestrained power over the private sector," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement.
A phone call to the Treasury for comment was not immediately returned Thursday morning.
The outcome of that fateful meeting _ which resulted in the government taking direct stakes in the banks through $125 billion in preferred stock purchases _ marked a shift in the government's strategy to fixing the financial system.
The Treasury had first decided to use a chunk of the $700 billion financial bailout package to pay for taking partial ownership stakes in banks, rather than using the money to buy rotten debts from financial institutions. The idea was that the investments would instill confidence in the system and get banks to lend again following the freeze of the credit markets.
The meeting was hosted by Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and current Treasury chief Timothy Geithner, who was then president of the New York Fed.
The banks that were initially required to accept the funds were Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., State Street Corp., Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America Corp., including the soon-to-be-acquired Merrill Lynch.
Paulson wanted healthy institutions that did not necessarily need capital from the government to participate in the program first to remove any stigma that might be associated with a bailout. He told reporters during a news conference that the intervention was "what we must do to restore confidence in our financial system."
The Treasury has since invested a total of $199.1 billion in more than 550 of the nation's banks, according to government data. Of that amount, $1.16 billion has been returned by 12 institutions.
Several other recipients of the funds, including JPMorgan and American Express Co., have stressed their desire to return the money as soon as possible. The funds have become burdensome for banks due to the increased government scrutiny and limits on compensation that are contingent with the investment.
http://wtop.com/?nid=111&sid=1675743

Gap between Baby Boomers, young minorities grows
The USA is developing a stark generation gap between aging white Baby Boomers and a young, growing minority population, according to U.S. Census data released today.
The minority population increased 2.3% to 104.6 million from mid-2007 to July 1, 2008, or just over one-third of the total population, the Census Bureau reported
Hispanics had the highest growth rate — 3.2% — during the 12 months.
Although immigration has slowed, higher birth rates among Hispanics make them the fastest growing group. Births, rather than immigration, accounted for about two-thirds of the 1.47 million increase in the Hispanic population in 2008, according to KennethJohnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. In addition, Hispanics are younger, on average, than the overall population. Births among Hispanics outpaced deaths by nearly 10 to one.
Forty-seven percent of children under 5 are minorities, as are 43% of young people under age 20.
"It's a cumulative effect of immigration," says Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center. "We've built up a population of Hispanics, and increasingly they're native born."
As the median age among non-Hispanic whites increases — it's 41.1 compared with 27.7 for Hispanics — so will the racial and ethnic generation gap, demographers say.
"A lot of these Boomers are going to be relying on this younger generation to take care of them in a lot of ways," says Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. "In another generation, this is going to be our workforce that is supporting Social Security."
Orange County, Fla., home of Walt Disney World, is one of six U.S. counties where the population became majority-minority in 2008: more than half the population are in groups other than non-Hispanic whites.
That's "not a surprise" to Orange County Mayor Richard Crotty, who says the county has always been "a snapshot of what America looks like." Nearly 10% of the nation's 3,142 counties have a minority population above 50%.
The demographic shift is most dramatic among "kids under 20," Mather says. "They really are the groups that are driving these changes."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2009-05-14-census_N.htm

Tincture of LawlessnessObama's Overreaching Economic Policies
By George F. WillThursday, May 14, 2009
Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.
In February, California's Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the state's fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that "loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester."
But the Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded, it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money.
Such a federal ukase (the word derives from czarist Russia; how appropriate) to a state legislature is a sign of the administration's dependency agenda -- maximizing the number of people and institutions dependent on the federal government. For the first time, neither sales nor property nor income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local governments. The federal government is.
The SEIU says the cuts violate contracts negotiated with counties. California officials say the state required the contracts to contain clauses allowing pay to be reduced if state funding is.
Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler's secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims -- and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors' contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.
Among Chrysler's lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler's lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.
The Economist says the administration has "ridden roughshod over [creditors'] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies'] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed." Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler's bankruptcy, asked that his clients' names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.
The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which has not yet been used for its supposed purpose (to purchase such assets from banks), has been the instrument of the administration's adventure in the automobile industry. TARP's $700 billion, like much of the supposed "stimulus" money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases. This is as lawless as it would be for Congress to say to the IRS: We need $3.5 trillion to run the government next year, so raise it however you wish -- from whomever, at whatever rates you think suitable. Don't bother us with details.
This is not gross, unambiguous lawlessness of the Nixonian sort -- burglaries, abuse of the IRS and FBI, etc. -- but it is uncomfortably close to an abuse of power that perhaps gave Nixon ideas: When in 1962 the steel industry raised prices, President John F. Kennedy had a tantrum and his administration leaked rumors that the IRS would conduct audits of steel executives, and sent FBI agents on predawn visits to the homes of journalists who covered the steel industry, ostensibly to further a legitimate investigation.
The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303014_pf.html

Here is an update from the April 2 post
Water Rights and Rain
Wildlife News on Jul 9, 2008
All she wants is the rain water that lands on her roof. She lives with her husband and two children in a solar-powered home in rural San Miguel County. Committed to promoting sustainability, Kris Holstrom grows organic produce year-round, most of which is sold to local restaurants and farmers markets. On a mesa at 9,000 feet elevation, however, water other than precipitation is hard to come by.
So Kris did what thousands of farmers before her have done: She applied for a water right. Except instead of seeking to divert water from a stream, she sought to collect rain that fell upon the roof of her house and greenhouse. To her surprise, the state engineer opposed her application, arguing that other water users already had locked up the right to use the rain. The Colorado Water Court agreed, and Kris was denied the right to store a few barrels of rainwater. If she persisted with rain harvesting, she would be subject to fines of up to $500 per day.
How could this happen?
Like other western states, Colorado water law follows the prior appropriation doctrine, of which the core principle is “first in time, first in right.” The first person to put water to beneficial use and comply with other legal requirements obtains a water right superior to all later claims to that water.
The right to appropriate enshrined in Colorado’s Constitution has been so scrupulously honored that nearly all of the rivers and streams in Colorado are overappropriated, which means there is often not enough water to satisfy all the claims to it. When this happens, senior water-right holders can “call the river” and cut off the flow to those who filed for water rights later, so-called “juniors.”
Overappropriated rivers are not unique to Colorado. Most of the watercourses in the West are fully or overappropriated. Yet other western states allow or even encourage rainwater harvesting. The obstacle for aspiring rainwater harvesters in Colorado is not the state constitution. It speaks only of the right to divert the “unappropriated waters of any natural stream.”
The problem arises because Colorado’s Supreme Court has given an expansive interpretation to the term “natural stream” and coupled that with a presumption that all diffused waters ultimately will migrate to groundwater or surface streams. And because most streams are overappropriated, collecting rainwater is seen as diverting the water of those who already hold rights to it.
How is a roof a “tributary”?
Applying this legal fiction to Kris Holstrom’s effort to grow food at home, the state engineer argued that her roofs were “tributary” to the San Miguel River. Because the San Miguel River is “on call” during the summer months, Kris’s rain catchment would, the state engineer argued, “cause injury to senior water rights.” The court agreed, even though there was no proof that the water dripping from Kris’s roof would ever make it to the river.
If Kris wanted to collect rainwater for her gardens, she’d have to pursue an augmentation plan and convince the state engineer and water court that she could replace 100 percent of the precipitation captured. Not only did she have to return to the stream every drop of rain she collected, she would have to pay for a complex engineering analysis to prove that her augmentation water would return to the stream in a timeframe mimicking natural conditions.
She didn’t even try. “The farm doesn’t make enough money to pay for an engineering analysis,” she said. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine a situation where it would make financial sense to harvest free rainwater that has to be replaced with another source of water.
The notion that you can’t utilize the rain falling on your roof might be easier to accept if you really were interfering with senior water rights, but in many situations it just isn’t true. In Kris’s case, most of the rain she collected would have evaporated or been transpired by native vegetation long before it ever reached the San Miguel River.
Hardly a drop in the bucket
A recent study commissioned by Douglas County and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has confirmed that very little precipitation that falls on an undeveloped site ever returns to the stream system. The study focused on an area in northwest Douglas County, where the average annual precipitation is 17.5 inches. In dry years, 100 percent of the annual precipitation is lost to evaporation and transpiration by vegetation. In wet years, a maximum of 15 percent of the precipitation returns to the stream system. On average, just 3 percent of annual precipitation ever returns to the stream.
Despite this hydrological reality, Colorado law requires anyone wanting to use rainwater catchment to send to the stream an amount of water equivalent to 100 percent of all precipitation harvested. That is, in effect, a gift to prior appropriators paid for by folks trying to live more sustainably.
An effort to address this problem stalled in the Colorado legislature this past session. A bill by state Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, would have allowed rural residents not on a municipal water system to store rainwater in cisterns up to 5,000 gallons. The bill also would have authorized 10 pilot projects where new housing developments could collect rainwater from rooftops and other impermeable surfaces. But even this tepid effort to update water law was sent to committee for further study.
The committee should use this study period to produce a bill that takes a more aggressive approach to water sustainability. The first thing is to make sure the benefits of rainwater harvesting are not dissipated into oversized yards filled with water-guzzling bluegrass. A serious effort would limit harvested rainwater to food production and Xeriscaped yards.
A resource down the drain
Even greater benefits could be achieved by promoting wide-scale rainwater harvesting in developed areas. Traditional land development practices typically direct runoff from roofs and other impervious surfaces to pollutant-laden streets and parking lots, and then toward storm drains.
Both of these problems would be ameliorated if all buildings were equipped to catch rainwater for later use. Additional benefits could be realized if the water collected from rooftops was brought inside for nonpotable uses. Rainwater that would otherwise be lost to evaporation or storm drains could be used in toilets and washing machines, and then sent to the treatment plant, thereby bringing more water into municipal water systems.
Colorado is expecting 3 million new residents by 2035. At the same time, climate change may be conspiring to exacerbate the water woes of all of the states served by the Colorado River. Rainwater harvesting is no panacea to deal with water shortages, but it should be part of a multifaceted approach to a looming crisis.
Fully utilizing precipitation where it falls reduces the demand on other water resources, leaving more water in streams or aquifers. The most important benefit of a legal change stimulating wide-scale rainwater harvesting may be its fostering of a new water ethic. People who make a personal effort to collect and utilize rain are less likely to waste water or tolerate public policies that allow waste by others, such as inefficient irrigation or inappropriate residential landscaping.
When people are maintaining gutters and cisterns to flush their toilets or grow their gardens, they are more likely to appreciate the importance and scarcity of water. They might finally say no to headlong growth that shows no regard for long-term availability of future water supplies.
Colorado should embrace rainwater harvesting. The legal fiction that all rain is tributary to a stream should be abandoned. Others should not be allowed to own the rain that falls on your roof before you can use it for reasonable domestic uses.
http://www.wildlifemanagementpro.com/2008/07/09/water-rights-and-rain/

Eeyores News and view

I'm not (or at least i don't think i'm a) big tinfoil hat kind of guy. But been hearing for years about all these diseases being engineered to be population control type devices. Been hearing for years about fringe elements planning population die off campaigns. I guess that would be ok if i got to pick who died off (just kidding) but here is an article about the government talking about it. Guess i need to go out and get a new roll of tinfoil. Could this be behind all these control the food and control the water bills going through Congress?
Earth population 'exceeds limits'
There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.
Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".
Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.
Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.
"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.
Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."
GM Foods 'needed'
A National Medal of Science laureate (America's highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.
"We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven.
"We're going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops," she told the BBC.

THE MOST POPULOUS NATIONS
China - 1.33bn
India - 1.16bn
USA - 306m
Indonesia - 230m
Brazil - 191m

"We accept exactly the same technology (as GM food) in medicine, and yet in producing food we want to go back to the 19th Century."
Dr Fedoroff, who wrote a book about GM Foods in 2004, believes critics of genetically modified maize, corn and rice are living in bygone times.
"We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production."
In a wide ranging interview, Dr Fedoroff was asked if the US accepted its responsibility to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be driving human-induced climate change. "Yes, and going forward, we just have to be more realistic about our contribution and decrease it - and I think you'll see that happening."
And asked if America would sign up to legally binding targets on carbon emissions - something the world's biggest economy has been reluctant to do in the past - the professor was equally clear. "I think we'll have to do that eventually - and the sooner the better."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7974995.stm

More cameras for Canada border
WASHINGTON — The U.S. will expand its use of security cameras on the Canadian border to see whether it can set up an extensive monitoring system similar to what protects the Mexican boundary, the Homeland Security Department announced Tuesday.
The department this summer will position 44 cameras in Detroit along Lake St. Clair, which separates the city from Canada, and 20 cameras in Buffalo along the Niagara River. There are now about 20 cameras along the entire 4,000-mile border between Canada and the continental U.S.
The $20 million program marks the department's first major effort to see whether the northern border, which has large swaths of woods, hills and lakes, can benefit from the extensive camera network along the 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexican border, said Mark Borkowski, head of the department's Secure Border Initiative.
Although the federal government has focused security efforts on the U.S.-Mexican border, Homeland Security says "the terrorist threat on the northern border is higher," according to a November report by Congress' Government Accountability Office (GAO). That's because of the "large expanse of area with limited law-enforcement coverage," the report says.
In 2007, the GAO found that investigators could drive along Canadian roads near the U.S., walk 25 feet to the border and hand a duffel bag to an investigator on the U.S. side. The test aimed to simulate terrorists smuggling in radioactive material.
Northern-state lawmakers such as Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., have said that Homeland Security isn't doing enough to protect the U.S.-Canadian border. Two days after taking office in January, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano launched a review of strategy along the U.S.-Canadian border.
The cameras, mounted on trees and buildings, will be operated remotely by the Border Patrol, Borkowski said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-04-01-borderfence_N.htm
Also
Surveillance towers planned for Detroit, Buffalo
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9798C9O2&show_article=1

NKorea threatens to shoot down spy planes
April 1, 2009 - 8:08am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea accused the United States of spying on the site of an impending rocket launch and threatened Wednesday to shoot down any U.S. planes that intrude into its airspace.
North Korea says it will send a communications satellite into orbit on a multistage rocket between April 4 and 8. The U.S., South Korea and Japan suspect the reclusive country is using the launch to test long-range missile technology, and they warn Pyongyang would face sanctions under a U.N. Security Council resolution banning it from ballistic activity.
Pyongyang's state radio accused U.S. RC-135 surveillance aircraft of spying on the launch site on its northeastern coast, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry, which is in charge of monitoring the North.
"If the brigandish U.S. imperialists dare to infiltrate spy planes into our airspace to interfere with our peaceful satellite launch preparations, our revolutionary armed forces will mercilessly shoot them down," the ministry quoted the radio as saying.
It was unclear what capability North Korea has to shoot down the high-flying Boeing RC-135, which can reach altitudes of nearly 10 miles (15 kilometers). The threat came a day after the North claimed the U.S. and South Korea conducted about 190 spy flights over its territory in March, including over the sea off the launch site.
The U.S. military in South Korea declined to comment on the spying allegations or the North's threat.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at a summit Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak that Pyongyang's launch would breach the U.N. resolution, and he pledged to respond in step with Seoul, Lee's office said.
Lee, in London for the G-20 summit, told Brown it was important for the international community to show a concerted response to the North's move, his office said.
Lee and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso also agreed at a summit Wednesday to "work together to make sure the international community shows a united response" to a North Korean launch, a statement from Lee's office said.
Aso said he will push for new U.N. sanctions if the launch takes place, while Lee "stressed the need to clearly show to North Korea, through close coordination of the international community, that it cannot always have its own way," South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Lee's spokesman Lee Dong-kwan as telling South Korean reporters.
In the Netherlands, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Pyongyang's move "an unfortunate and continuing example of provocation by the North Koreans."
"There will be consequences, certainly, in the United Nations Security Council if they proceed with the launch," she said.
Clinton also strongly backed Japan's plans to shoot down any incoming North Korean rocket debris, saying the country "has every right to protect and defend its territory from what is clearly a missile launch."
Japan has deployed battleships with antimissile systems off its northern coast and stationed Patriot missile interceptors around Tokyo to shoot down any wayward rocket parts that the North has said might fall over the area.
Tokyo has said it is only protecting its territory and has no intention of trying to shoot down the rocket itself, but North Korea said it is not convinced and accused Japan of inciting militarism at home to justify developing a nuclear weapons program of its own.
If Japan tries to intercept the satellite, the North's army "will consider this as the start of Japan's war of re-invasion ... and mercilessly destroy all its interceptor means and citadels with the most powerful military means," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday.
The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank that provides detailed analysis about North Korea _ said in a report that the country is believed to have "assembled and deployed nuclear warheads" recently for its medium-range Rodong missiles, which are capable of striking Japan.
But its Seoul-based expert, Daniel Pinkston, said it is unclear if it has mastered the technology necessary to miniaturize the warheads and put them on Rodong missiles, which have a range of 620 to 930 miles (1,000 to 1,500 kilometers).
Adding to the complexity of the situation, the North announced Tuesday it will indict and try two American journalists accused of crossing the border illegally from China on March 17 and engaging in "hostile acts."
http://wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1591296

It is amazing to me that we think when we gain a small victory and that government actually corrects some of it's wrongs, that we get over joyed. when we should be mad that they still stop you from doing what you want with your property. Have you ever considered how much control they have over your life now. When you buy a piece of property in Maryland and try to develop it, it is absolutely crazy what you have to give up. If you have a wet spot on your land that is called a "wetlands" don't interfere with that or you will get fined (it is your land but you can't do anything with it). If you want to cut down some trees and clear an area you have to deed a save tree area, that is your land and you pay taxes on it, but you can not do anything with it anymore. It is crazy, these people think they won a victory, they just have been given a fraction of their rights back and they are happy with just that small piece.
Some Coloradans Can Now Legally Collect Rainwater Reporting
Terry Jessup DENVER (CBS4) ―
The bill's sponsors figure about 300,000 people statewide will now be permitted to harvest rainwater, mostly the in rural areas who already have exempt wells for household and domestic use.
Colorado lawmakers have passed a bill that loosens a 19th century ban on people who want to collect rainwater.
Many people were surprised to learn they're not entitled to snow and rain that falls on their homes. A state senator recently found that out when he tried to conserve rainwater for his flower garden.
In New Mexico it is common practice to harvest rainwater and store it in cisterns. That's what Sen. Chris Romer had hoped to do in Colorado.
"I truly wanted to collect the rainwater off my roof to use in my garden, because I love gardening, but unfortunately, I got in big trouble," Romer said.
That's because Colorado law dating back to the 19th century said every drop of rain must flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, that it was the property of farmers and ranchers and anyone else who had purchased the rights to those waterways.
"You've got to be kidding. You're breaking the law if you put a rain barrel in to capture rain?" said Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhan.
That was the reaction of Looper's constituents, prompting her and Romer to get the 120-year-old law changed. They did it by presenting a study that showed 97 percent of rainwater never makes it to streams because it evaporates.
The bill that has passed says residents can now collect it with certain restrictions.
"You can capture enough rain or snow to be able to put in a garden, to be able to irrigate up to an acre of land, to be able to possibly put out a small fire," Looper said.
Residents still can't harvest rain without a permit from the state engineer's office, and the permits are targeted for those who live in rural areas, not people living the suburbs.
"If you're tied to some type of commercial water system, or municipal water system, you may not be able to put a rain barrel in," Looper said.
"This is actually a great new concept, and given climate change, and given where we're going, we need new ideas to help us deal with our water shortages in the future," Romer said.
The bill's sponsors figure about 300,000 people statewide will now be permitted to harvest rainwater, mostly the in rural areas who already have exempt wells for household and domestic use.
There is now a second bill up for consideration that would expand rain collection to new developments in urban areas. That would allow for a pilot program and the bill will be heard on Friday.
Colorado's rainwater bill has gotten a lot of attention. Along with CBS4's reporting, including trips to New Mexico, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal have picked up the story.
http://cbs4denver.com/local/rain.water.collecting.2.971880.html