Using natural water source

[BellChell123]

Water rights are vicious! But you would be safer checking with your local water commission or court house about whether someone you never even heard of has legal title to every drop of your spring water. Even diverting it can open you up to a law suit.

When you photograph something, you would do well to place a familiar object next to it for scale.We have no way of seeing whether your stream is a few inches wide or several yards.

Is the spring a year-round source? If no one owns the water rights, and the spring is on your land, check to see if your deed specifies that you own surface and underground mineral and water rights. If it's yours, you can then do any old thing you want. I wouldn't let it get back to the EPA, though. They have been known to throw up road blocks. We sure live in fun times.

And I would have the local health department run a water test for you. If, for instance, there is arsenic present, which is common, you want to know if it's at safe levels for your chickens.

Wow! You really know your stuff! I take it you've done this before?

 

[azygous]

Not so much that I'm some kind of expert on this stuff than I grew up during the water wars (real shooting and everything) in California, and now live in Colorado where, until just a couple of years ago, it was against the law to collect rain water in a rain barrel from rain falling off your own roof. Rich water barons own water rights to every creek and stream, and I happen to live on a mountain side that sheds rain water into a creek of which they controlled the water rights.

Don't spread it around, but I collected rain water anyway. Obviously, this law was virtually unenforceable, so they finally repealed it.

In addition to all that, the community in which I live tried to develop two water wells we had, but we discovered we didn't own the water rights to them, so we had to borrow a couple million dollars to pipe water fifteen miles from the nearest town up to our mountain so we could quit hauling home every single drop of water we needed. I did that myself for ten years before we finally finished our water system. You really conserve every drop when you have to drive home all the water you cook, clean and bathe in.

Yeah, I have had a bit of experience with water.

 

[BellChell123]

Quote: I won't, I agree this law was idiotic.

I hope your water woes are all cleared up now!

 

[azygous]

Not really. We've been in a severe drought in my section of the country for the past several years, and it's getting much worse. Even though I have city water piped to my house now, it won't do me any good if it doesn't snow. That's where the drinking water comes from, snow melt in the Rocky Mts.

We've been getting regular cold fronts coming through, but instead of six inches to a foot of snow that we should be getting, all that happens is a powdery dusting that you can't even measure.

I grow squash and carrots to supplement my chickens' diet, but it rains so seldom in the summer now that I've resorted to dashing out during a rare rain storm and pumping water from my rain gutters into storage containers to use on the garden. I learned the hard way, two summers back, that watering the garden using city water results in a $750 water bill. Our billing system is based on the more water you use, the more you pay for it.

I don't think I've ever taken water for granted, and unless things improve, I never will.