That rainwater really isn’t yours

WOODINVILLE, Wash. – 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 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 because 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.

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

But there still are a few neighborhoods that aren’t covered because stormwater drains into creeks, streams and lakes rather than sewer pipes. Creating a more self-sufficient future is what 21 Acres is all about – strengthening the local food chain and educating people about sustainable farming and living.

The three-year-old project outside Woodinville has community gardens, commercial farmers, goats, bees and big plans.

The nonprofit is raising $9 million for a showcase agricultural center, with solar panels, four types of roof gardens, underground water tanks and a geothermal energy loop for heating and cooling.

It’s also in an area where finding legal water for new farming projects is becoming more urgent. Some King County growers without water rights resort to sneaking around with buckets, scooping up ditch water.

County officials are searching for solutions, such as transferring water rights or using reclaimed water from the Brightwater sewage treatment plant. Community members at 21 Acres are trying other ideas.

“Our value system says we don’t want to just hook up to the city water system, so that’s why we’re trying to develop alternatives,” said interim executive director Debora Boeck.

A well small enough to be exempt from state regulation runs on a solar pump, filling a new 5,000-gallon tank designed to irrigate the agricultural fields. The proposed rain storage system would soak smaller garden plots, currently watered with an octopus-like tangle of hoses drawing Woodinville water.

With little hope the farm could get a new water right, they’re not planning to apply for one. Instead, Carlson and others hope the state makes it easier to legally collect rainwater.

“We just have some archaic laws that need to be changed,” he said.

Yet it can be politically difficult to propose different sets of rules for urban and rural areas of the state. And so far efforts to reach consensus on where to draw regulatory lines have been fruitless.

“Depending on who you talk to and what part of the state they live in, the numbers they’re comfortable with are very different,” said Ecology’s Walsh. “It’s not clear at this point whether we can move this further.”