From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):
Rain barrels would have less impact on water rights than uses such as stock ponds and rural household wells or just shoveling snow off the sidewalk into the grass and planting trees in cities, in Rep. Daneya Esgar’s estimation.
“It does not make a lot of sense to pick and choose water rights,” the Pueblo Democrat told the House agriculture committee Monday. “We have strong data that shows no impact.”
But some agricultural groups are stubbornly insisting that they’ll suffer by a thousand 55-gallon cuts.
“You’re taking a little bit of water. Can you measure it? Maybe not,” said Jim Yahn, manager of the North Sterling irrigation district and a member of the state Interbasin Compact Committee. “But at some point the ground is saturated and it’s going to run off.”
The bill to legalize two 55-gallon rain barrels per single-family home, HB1005, passed the committee on a 10-2 vote Monday and now heads to the House floor. Water could be stored and used later on gardens or lawns.
The bill is similar to a measure that passed the state House last year, only to be corked in a Senate committee at the end of the session. This year, there are some modifications that clearly state rain barrels will not interfere with the constitutional and legal doctrine of prior appropriation. Two amendments to safeguard water rights were added Monday.
But the committee drowned an amendment proposed by Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, to curtail rain barrels during river calls, a move co-sponsor Jessie Danielson, D-Wheatridge, called “hostile.” The sponsors also have raised an umbrella against attempts to put control of rain barrels in the hands of the state engineer.
The bill as it is got a neutral response from the Division of Water Resources, and conceptual support from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
“We as a state want our brand to be about water innovation,” CWCB executive director James Eklund told the committee, adding that rain barrels fit well with the public education component of Colorado’s Water Plan.
Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Institute, broke down the impact of rain barrels by the numbers for the committee, based on Colorado State University studies.
A 4,000-square-foot urban lot would receive 45,000 gallons of water from 7 inches of rain during the agricultural growing season. The ground absorbs 2 inches per foot anyway. Typical landscaping on that lot would use 90,000 gallons in the same period. What’s more, the rooftops and sidewalks that are built on that lot increase runoff by a factor of 10.
“The amount stored by a rain barrel would be captured in the soil anyway,” Waskom said.
In areas where they are legal — all other 49 states — only 5-10 percent of households use them.
“If we could show a difference (in the percentage using barrels) we would, but you multiply by zero and get zero,” Waskom said.
Yahn, along with other ag groups, testified that downstream producers in the South Platte watch Denver rain events closely and rely on the surge in the river.
“We’ve been in the rain collection business for more than 100 years. It’s called reservoirs and the water is taken in priority,” Yahn said.
He asked what legal recourse farmers would have under the proposed bill.
Deputy State Engineer Kevin Rein later explained it would be difficult to pursue a remedy for rain barrels.
But Rein also confirmed Esgar’s assertion that far more water is taking out of priority already in stock ponds and through household wells on 35-acre lots which can take enough water for three homes, an acre of garden and domestic animals.
Colorado also allows a pilot project at Sterling Ranch in Douglas County to harvest rainwater that would otherwise go to a stream under a 2009 law, Rein said.
Environmental groups support the bill as a way to increase urban awareness about conservation.
“They begin to understand how much water a lawn or garden takes,” said Drew Beckwith of Western Resource Advocates. “It makes visible what is invisible to most people.”