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Who owns the rain?
Turns out... not you!
You're actually breaking the law, if you try to capture rain...
falling onto your roof and pour it on your flower bed.
A prominent Utah car dealer found that out...
when he tried to do something good for the environment.
John Hollenhorst has this surprising story.
Rebecca Nelson captures rainwater in a barrel, and she pours it on her plants.
We can fill up a barrel in one rainstorm.
And so it seems a waste to just let it fall into the gravel.
Car dealer Mark Miller wanted to do pretty much the same thing on a bigger scale.
He collects rainwater on the roof of his new building,
stores it in a cistern and hopes to clean cars with it in a new water-efficient car wash.
But without a valid water right,
state officials say he can't legally divert rainwater.
I was surprised. We thought it was our water
State officials say it's an old legal concept...
to protect people who do have water rights.
Obviously if you use the water upstream, it won't be there for the person to use it downstream.
Utah's the second driest state in the nation. Our laws probably ought to catch up to that.
So what about the little guy, watering with rainwater at home?
Will anybody do anything about that violation of the law?
If she really does that, then she ought to have a water right to do it.
Are you gonna make an issue out of that?
No, we have bigger fish to fry.
After months of discussion, city and state officials worked out...
a tentative compromise with the bigger fish, Mark Miller Toyota.
He would basically be using a Salt Lake City water right and diverting it under our name.
Small fish are off the hook for now. The State has no plans to go after them.
John Hollenhorst, Eyewitness News, Salt Lake City.
State officials say the Mark Miller agreement...
could become a blueprint for other rainwater projects.
Home-owner projects, although tecnically illegal, are likely to stay off the State radars.
Raindrops fall in your head, you probably...
...you'd better get rid of them!
Oh, man...