Is storing rainwater a violation?

Published 10:15 pm Tuesday, July 22, 2008

WOODINVILLE — On a nonprofit Woodinville farm devoted to sustainable practices, rain hits a green shed roof covered in a carpet of herbs and moss.

Drops run down a chain into four weathered barrels, draining to a small pond ringed by cherry trees, huckleberry bushes and native plants.

It’s a system the 21 Acres farm wants to create on a much grander scale when it breaks ground next year on an agricultural center with farm stalls, classrooms and test kitchens. The new addition could store 150,000 gallons of rain to irrigate dozens of adjacent garden plots, currently sucking up expensive city water.

There’s just one problem.

It almost certainly would violate state water law. And if one wanted to be persnickety, so might the rain barrels cities encourage conservation-minded homeowners to buy.

“We’re all promoting it, it’s the right thing to do, it makes sense, but it’s illegal,” said Vince Carlson, a meadmaker and architect for 21 Acres. “Nobody says anything, and we’re all kind of hush-hush about it.”

Technically, rain that falls on your roof isn’t yours for the taking. It’s a resource of the state, which regulates the use of public waters through an allocation process that can take years to navigate.

The state has long allowed people to collect a small amount of rain without asking.

Although no one wants to police homeowners harvesting a few hundred gallons for a backyard garden, the state hasn’t defined where that regulatory threshold lies. Someone collecting rain in larger quantities to irrigate a farm or wash laundry in a new condo building without a state water right could be breaking the rarely enforced law.

“We’re not going to start issuing permits for a pickle barrel in the backyard. But what if it’s four pickle barrels or a system that has 20,000 gallons of storage?” said Brian Walsh, a manager in the Department of Ecology’s water resources program.

In June, the agency started trying to craft new regulations to govern rainwater collection and remove legal uncertainties.

Past legislative efforts have died in the buzz saw of statewide water politics. In dry areas where every drop of water belongs to someone, large-scale rain collection could hurt downstream users or siphon off water that’s reserved to provide healthy fish habitat.

In urban areas, though, some cities and developers promoting green building practices simply ignored the issue. The rainwater collection system used to flush toilets in Seattle City Hall likely violated state law when it was built five years ago.

Since then, the city has continued to promote rainwater collection in new developments, since using rain for irrigation or graywater conserves drinking water. The systems also have potential to filter pollutants from stormwater or keep sewers from overflowing and releasing raw sewage during storms.

“Since it’s been an unsettled issue, I think there was a feeling that we’ll do this and test it,” said Paul Fleming, who manages climate and sustainability projects for Seattle Public Utilities.

But some developers were unwilling to gamble on rainwater collection because of the legal uncertainties. Neighborhood opponents, for instance, theoretically could use the water-right issue to block a project.

That’s why the city of Seattle recently obtained a citywide water-right permit, which makes it legal to collect rain from rooftops in most areas of the city.

“Most people just blow it off and nobody’s going to go after them, at least not yet,” said Michael Broili, who designs rainwater-collection systems. “But water is a huge, huge issue that is just below the surface of the radar and in the next … years, especially if global warming becomes a reality, it’s even going to become more of one.”