Downspout politics, upstream conflict: formalizing rainwater harvesting in the United States

Abstract

This article examines the formalization of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and the implications of new policy trends for water governance. Analysis of 96 RWH policies across the United States indicates three trends: (1) the ‘codification’ of water through administrative rather than public law; (2) the institutionalization of RWH through market-based tools; and (3) the rise of policies at different spatial scales, resulting in greater institutional complexity, new bureaucratic actors, and potential points of friction. Drawing on the cases of Colorado and Texas, the article argues that states with diverse legal traditions of water enable more successful regulatory environments for downspout alternatives.

Keywords:

• rainwater harvesting
• scale
• formalization
• governance
• legal pluralism
• property

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant #0727296 (Meehan) from the National Science Foundation. We thank James Castañeda for his initial work on the database and Nick Perdue for map production. We are grateful to Adell Amos and Manuel Prieto for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. Following the Miller debacle, in 2010 the Utah legislature approved Senate Bill 32, which allows residents to harvest limited quantities of precipitation without obtaining a formal right, but only after registering with the state government. For more detail, see the Utah Division of Water Rights (http://waterrights.utah.gov).

2. For the sake of variety, we use “rainwater harvesting” (RWH) and “rain catchment” interchangeably.

3. For the ARCSA database, see http://www.arcsa.org/?page=273. The NCSL database is at http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/env-res/rainwater-harvesting.aspx.

4. For potable consumption in Ohio, systems must be small-scale (less than 15 connections or use by 25 individuals daily).

5. Hispanic water law is also present in portions of the US Southwest, such as New Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley (Dobkins, 1959; Perramond, 2013).

6. Arizona Revised Statute §43-1090.01, which provided corporate and individual income tax credits for water harvesting, expired in 2012.