Most rainwater collection still illegal in Colorado

To encourage conservation, cities and water agencies in California and other states have begun nudging homeowners to use captured rain for their gardens, rather than water from the backyard faucet. Colorado is one of the last places in the country where rainwater barrels are still largely illegal because of a complex system of water rights in which nearly every drop is spoken for.

And when legislators there tried to enact a law this spring to allow homeowners to harvest the rain, conservationists learned the power of the entrenched rules that allocate western water to those who have first claim to it, even if it is the rain running down someone’s roof.

In California, farmers and other residents are cutting their water use by 25 percent or more. Cities in Colorado’s fast-growing Front Range, in the central part of the state, are vying with farms and users on the wetter, western side of the state as officials piece together a water plan. And as water grows scarcer, critics have assailed a water rights system that is based largely on seniority and century-old claims to stream flows.

Read the entire article and background information on The New York Times.