Pop Mech: Who owns the rain?
Drought is giving rise to a burgeoning western movement by homeowners in parched cities and towns to fend for themselves, the way westerners do, and capture their own rain runoff. But nothing is so simple, and probably never was. There’s more than a little historical substance in Mark Twain’s old saw, that whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over.
In the current issue of Popular Mechanics, Andrew Moseman — in Who Owns the Rain? — explores the thorny political and legal issues that are rearing their heads as increasing numbers of people put barrels and buckets under their downspouts to conserve for watering lawns and gardens.
If the rainwater capture movement really takes hold, the political strife could get nasty, because several states such as Colorado and Utah have old water rights allocation systems that run head-long into the idea of personal ownership of rainwater. In the face of long-term drought, as Moseman writes, “the legal battles over who owns the rain won’t go away anytime soon.” Whether it really takes hold as a widespread conservation strategy is a question the climate itself might answer. It goes without saying, of course, that you can’t capture rain that doesn’t fall.
Popular Mechanics has another keeper this issue by online editor Tyghe Trimble – The Running Shoe Debate — that describes how “running rebels are shedding their shoes and reporting years of injury-free miles.” So what the implications of this radical turn of events for the $25 billion running shoe industry? Trimble has it all.
- JDC
