What would Sepp do? OR man gets jail for rain collection

The comments are intriguing too, lots of different perceptions & implications. What do you think?

http://m.mnn.com/your-home/at-home/blogs/oregon-man-in-possession-of-13-million-gallons-of-illicit-rainwater-sentence

Well to me there should be ponds created everywhere. The water soaks into the land "sponge" and slowly comes out over time. Rather than having the spring floods and fall drought , the water is slowly released to the drainage. There are lots of examples out there where people have taken deserts and planted forests which create springs and streams where there were none before. Once again just shows the ignorance of folks who make the laws.

Sepp buys his neighbor's water. He lives in an area with abundant water.

The man in OR dammed up streams and stole scarce water that belonged to somebody else.

We cannot compare apples:oranges. Two entirely different situations.

That article was definitely slanted. I have seen others slanted the other way. I don't know what the truth to that story is, but there is definitely more to it.

Truth is tricky isn't it. This is rainwater runoffon his property, not damming a stream running through. No one is bothered by the fact that it was permitted and then revoked? I don't recall where in OR exactly, but much of the state has abundant water. What's your source on Sepp buying water? I've not seen that in anything I've read.

This one has been bouncing around for some time, and I thought we had heard the last of it.

The facts:

1) The man in question received a permit for rainwater catchment for personal use. In Western states, this is intended to provide water for CONSUMPTION.

2) Instead of harvesting a couple thousand gallons a year for consumption, he created ponds that sequestered more than 13 MILLION gallons of water.

3) The law is written such that in any case where the water rights of farmers are infringed by water collection in the watershed, the state has the right to revoke the permit.

4) The state revoked the permit and ordered the man to drain his ponds. He complied.

5) Afterwards, without a permit, he rebuilt his weirs and filled his ponds again. The state noticed (because you can see the ponds from sattelite images, and because there was a noticable decrease in runoff)

6) He was again ordered to drain the ponds and threatened with fines. He refused.

7) He was fined and jailed.



Do I feel bad for him? Not a bit. He had at least four choices:

-Move to a place where the laws are different.
-Campaign to change the laws.
-Live within the laws and get the appropriate permitting.
-Break the law and live with the consequences.

He chose the fourth. It's Ethics 101. Nobody is REQUIRED to follow the rules. You have your own free will. If you choose to not follow the rules, you need to be able to accept the consequences. Making a big stink about it in the news is childish. I see "news" like this all the time, and it sickens me. Grow up, people.