Legal Issues in Permaculture

What are some of the main and/or strange legal issues people have come across in trying to put permaculture into practice? Some, like those in Farmaggedon, Monsanto's patent enforcement, FDA enforcement, etc., spring to mind immediately, but I'm wondering if there are issues you have encountered personally in trying to design your farms/homesteads/lives around permaculture principles.

I am currently a law student looking to explore these issues to see what kind of solutions could best address them.

Thank you!

1- grey water use. Illegal around my area. Approved systems in other states that I've looked into are incredibly complicated, expensive, and impractical.
2- human manure. Composting toilets are illegal many places. And where legal, there are severe limitations as to which systems may be installed.
3- human urine. Severe restrictions or outright illegal to collect and use.
4- although not an issue in agricultural areas, composting is illegal in many residential and urban areas.
5- in many residential and urban areas it is illegal to use front, and sometimes side, yards for food production.
6- man made ponds illegal in many areas, and if legal, are regulated to the point that most landowners cannot afford to construct them.
7- illegal to have even one chicken in many areas.
8- wind turbines prohibited in many areas
9- solar installations often require expensive and lengthy processes to get approved.
10- hydroelectric systems illegal in many areas.
11- use of local tree species for building construction illegal if the species is not on approved list, regardless of its known characteristics.
12- sale of produce grown and livestock products raised is often so restricted or regulated to the point that sales are almost impossible. Selling stuff legally can be expensive and challenging.
13- use of animal manures is controlled or illegal in some areas.
14- collection of rainwater is prohibited in some regions.

Give me some time and I'll think of more.

...Su Ba
www.kaufarmer.blogspot.com

i havent been doing this stuff very long, but the 3 biggest i have encountered so far are:

inability to damn/pond up rain water (CO water rights are brutal)

inability to plants what the county calls "noxious weeds" (hard working pioneers)

inability to slaughter/process animals for resale that were grown on the farm (must be slaughtered/processed in a USDA inspected facility to be resold)

Thanks for your answers! I'm going to focus on food related issues for the time being and will post anything I come up with that might be of interest.

I too am interested in legal aspects of permaculture. I have my PDC and I just graduated with a Masters in Environmental Law and Policy and am looking to collect / develop / connect legal resources for permaculture practitioners, particularly focusing on shifting local land use zoning and planning laws. William, I would love to discuss your research further.

Thanks,
Lindsay

anybody know of good video(s) made for city/govt. officials to help properly educate them about this so they can be more supportive/encouraging**?

of course the content would include how such permaculture technologies/setups would not be done in the right, responsible way, and how to avoid that (one example of a main tenet of permaculture is to slowly catch/sink water in the landscape, but also, depending on the land, if too much is caught, it may lead to unstable, dangerous land, and toward a landslide (like here or here)), and i believe it's important to have content around conflicting topics like:

*compost/dry toilets and waste/used (gray and black) water
*rocket stoves, and other setups that could pose a fire risk
*nature-based landscaping (such as depaving, curb cutting like rainwater harvesting guru Brad Lancaster speaks on here)
*good, safe water provision

**of course when done in smart, responsible ways, which can be a bigger IF unless there's solid community education to be smart and responsible in changing to radically different ways than they're used to