Maybe you’ve heard about Gary Harrington, of Eagle Point, Oregon, and his battle with local officials over his rural collection of rainwater? (yes, that kind of water…from the sky)
I’m sorry! Not his battle – I meant his arrest, 9-count misdemeanor conviction, sentencing of 30 days in jail, and $1500 fine.
Think it can’t happen here?
If certain groups of people in New Hampshire have their way (cough…State Representative Judith Spang of Durham…cough), we’ll have a few Gary Harringtons here at home, shortly.
You see, Representative Spang and her over-zealous, fellow quixotic pals in the 9 Regional Planning Commissions, with a slew of other un-elected NGOs, would like nothing better than to declare your well water and the rain that falls from the sky as state property, all in the name of sustainably protecting us…from a problem that doesn’t exist…when we already have laws in place to do so.
In the true spirit of a nanny-state, and completely ignoring common law and the State Constitution, they are working with NH DES, OEP, and HHS in order to mirror Oregon, Vermont, and Rhode Island programs to monitor (and likely tax) your private well consumption, micro-mange and further restrict your private “land use”, and tax penalize you based on how “permeable” your property is, which relates to how much rainwater will run off your property, to name just a few goals.
And they are now using Federal dollars to implement their strategies, which have been percolating for years, waiting for an ideologically sympathetic and spendthrift central administration to be their sugar-daddy and make their dreams come true. Enter President Obama’s “Sustainable Communities Initiative” and our very own conduit program, “Granite State Future” (already the recipient of a multi-million dollar federal grant), to push their agenda forward.
And their underlying agenda isn’t really about “the water”. But we’ll get into that later.
