{"id":9041,"date":"2015-06-12T09:27:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T14:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9041"},"modified":"2015-06-12T09:27:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T14:27:46","slug":"theres-nothing-heroic-about-stealing-water-from-the-commons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9041","title":{"rendered":"There’s Nothing Heroic About Stealing Water From the Commons"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s Nothing Heroic About Stealing Water From the Commons<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n
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It\u2019s not every day that someone who steals water from the commons for private use on his large estate gains folk hero status in the sustainability movement. But thanks to a few irresponsible members of the alternative press, and a well-earned reputation in several states for having complex rainwater catchment regulations,\u00a0that\u2019s what happened to Gary Harrington<\/a>. For over a decade, Harrington diverted massive, river-sized runoff water from snow and rainfall into large reservoirs on his land. That water was part of a watershed, and was supposed to supply the town of Medford, Oregon. When, after repeated attempts to negotiate with him, the state finally prosecuted Harrington, he painted himself as a folk hero and a rebel against government overreach.<\/p>\n

The libertarian alternative media, with their connections to the sustainability and self-sufficiency movements, drank the story up like water. They ran pieces\u00a0saying things<\/a>\u00a0like \u201ca rural Oregon man was slapped with fines for collecting rain water on his own property\u201d;\u00a0referred to<\/a>\u00a0the \u201csimple act of collecting rainwater on his own property,\u201d and\u00a0lamented<\/a>\u00a0that, in this era of government control, we aren\u2019t even allowed to collect rainwater for personal use. The articles sounded alarmist, sanctimonious tones about self-sufficiency and the dangers of Big Brother, how it\u2019s now illegal to collect rainwater on your own property, how the government claims to own even the rain.<\/p>\n

None of them were remotely true. As the Oregon Water Resources Department stated in a press release dated July 29, 2012, and reprinted at\u00a0Snopes.com<\/a>, it\u2019s perfectly legal in Oregon to collect rainwater for personal use. You can collect it in barrels or tarps or off your own roof. What you can\u2019t do is alter or collect from flowing bodies of water.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

– See more at: http:\/\/www.occupy.com\/article\/there\u2019s-nothing-heroic-about-stealing-water-commons#sthash.v9NIgGmF.dpuf<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s Nothing Heroic About Stealing Water From the Commons It\u2019s not every day that someone who steals water from the commons for private use on his large estate gains folk hero status in the sustainability movement. But thanks to a few irresponsible members of the alternative press, and a well-earned reputation in several states for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[152,6320,6318,716,769,866,6319,6317],"class_list":["post-9041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-commons","tag-occupy-com","tag-rainwater","tag-self-sufficiency","tag-sustainability","tag-water","tag-water-catchment","tag-water-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9042,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041\/revisions\/9042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}