Pond-friendly U.S. states

I almost bought a giant tract of land in Colorado before learning that it is not legal to do large-scale water catchment (ponds and such) there since the water belongs to Oklahoma, which became a state first.  

Does anyone have a resource with a good, comprehensive list of which states have which restrictions on water?  

Many thanks!

Hi Jeremy,
It has been my experience that most of these sorts of regulations are per county (or even per city/town) rather than per state. In general the Southwestern USA is going to have more restrictions on water since it is dryer, than say the Northeastern USA. Of course you need it more in the Southwest, so you would think they would be more open to it things that would hold water :)

I would look at rural states in areas where water is plentiful and you would probably have better luck. I'm thinking east of the Mississippi particularly.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/femp/rainwater-harvesting-regulations-map  <-- this map is created by the US Department of Energy, and includes a visual guide to strict/loose/no restrictions, and if you click the state, you can view the precise laws regarding water harvesting in that state.  

Out of the lower 48 states in the U.S., Colorado and Utah are the only states that are currently heavily regulated to keep homeowners from harvesting and using the rain that falls on their property. Many states DO have a 'Gallon Maximum' that you can harvest and store, keeping it out of the underground aquifers and other natural river systems.  
Many states also have laws against the COMMERCIAL harvesting of rainwater.

Keep in mind: there are generally 3 categories of laws that restrict water use in the USA.

1) Groundwater - How many gallons can you draw up from the underground aquifers in certain time-frames?
These laws are generally done at a local level - in towns, cities, and counties.

2) Rainwater harvesting - How much water can you harvest, from rainfall that lands on your property?

3) Surface Water Rights - How much manipulation can you do to existing bodies of water, moving rivers, springs, and temporary (seasonal or storm-event) surface water flow?
These laws are ALSO usually done at a local level - in towns, cities, and counties. Sometimes these laws vary by the body of water, by city zoning, or by the property itself.


Building a huge pond could potentially be affected by all 3 of those types of laws.
- If you planned to use well water to help fill the pond, you may exceed your maximum allowed gallons-per-month drawn up from the groundwater.

- It may exceed the maximum allowed gallons of rainwater you can harvest and store for personal use. (However, check the time limits on these - some are gallons-per-day, some are per-month, or per-season

- Depending on the location of the pond, some states may fuss if you catch significant seasonal storm runoff that otherwise would have gone into the local rivers & downstream watersheds.

Your best bet is to narrow down your search to a couple states, and look up THESE SPECIFIC TERMS:
- [State] Water Allocation Laws
- [State] Laws Manmade Lake

Kentucky, for one, has a lot of areas with no Zoning (so you have a lot of freedom with how you build your house & use your property) and no regulations or laws regarding rainwater harvesting.  In a lot of the state, it's pretty straightforward to get a USDA Rural Development loan for a homestead.
The absolute ownership doctrine in KY permits the landowner to extract an unlimited amount of water for use on overlying or distant lands regardless of injury to other users.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1112&context=kwrri_reports

The kentucky extension office even offers advice on how to build small manmade lakes & stock them for fishing and aquiculture.
https://freshwater-aquaculture.extension.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/MtGPondsSmallLakesKentucky.pdf

Jeremy Watts wrote:I almost bought a giant tract of land in Colorado before learning that it is not legal to do large-scale water catchment (ponds and such) there since the water belongs to Oklahoma, which became a state first.  Many thanks!

I'm pretty sure you mean California rather than Oklahoma. California became a state in 1850, Colorado in 1876, and Oklahoma wasn't until 1907.

In general, the big rectangular states are more likely to have water restrictions than the other states.

The university extension office in the state you are researching can be a good source of information.  Grants come and go, but some states have provided funding for putting in a pond if you have livestock.

This may me a slightly technical answer, but east of the Rockies, most people have access to riparian rights, which essentially means that if the water is on your land, you can use it as long as you don’t divert it to another watershed (the actual legal code is vastly more complicated and specific to the point of being virtually unenforceable—installing a gutter and downspout technically violates the exact letter of the law but nobody is looking).

West of the Rockies where it is much more arid, the whole Colorado basin (and other basins) are given water access by Right of First Appropriation.  This means that if one was the FIRST person to access water on a body of running water, that person has virtually unlimited access to the water.  The second gets access to whatever is left over and so on.  The lower the appropriation number, the better.  And there can be stiff penalties for taking water out of turn.

Generally there are water districts that have the ultimate legal authority and they frequently cover multiple states.  As I am an East-of-the-Rockies guy, this all feels very weird to me.  To me, water falls from the sky, I take what I need, then I throw it back onto the ground when I am done with it.  But in the West, evaporation claims that water before it gets to the next person.  ARRRRGGHH!!

I agree with John about University extensions.they can be very helpful.

Eric

Water doesn't disappear when it evaporates. It settles as dew at night, or as rain in the mountains.

Very interesting map, thankyou.