Wait Till You Hear The Judge’s Reply
The Theology of the Cloud: When the State Claims God’s Work
The modern administrative state has a unique talent for taking a concept that is universally understood by kindergarteners—like the fact that rain falls from the sky—and twisting it into a Kafkaesque nightmare of property rights and theft. In a courtroom exchange that borders on the theological, a man stands accused of “stealing state property” because he placed a bucket under his own roof to save his dying tomatoes during a drought. The city, in a display of arrogance that would make a medieval king blush, claims ownership of the rain itself. They argue that the water falling from the heavens is “public trust” property the moment it exists, and that catching it before it hits the ground constitutes “hoarding state resources.” This is not just legal overreach; it is a claim of divine authority. The state is essentially asserting that it is the intermediary between the clouds and the earth, and that you need a permit to receive the blessings of nature.
The defendant’s plea is one of desperate simplicity. “It’s been a drought for 6 months… My tomatoes were dying.” He is a man trying to sustain life on his own patch of dirt. He is not selling the water. He is not diverting a major aquifer. He is engaging in the ancient, instinctual practice of resource conservation. He saw water going to waste—runoff—and decided to use it to keep his food growing. In a rational society, this would be applauded as “green” behavior. We are constantly lectured about sustainability, about reducing strain on municipal water supplies. Here is a man doing exactly that—using gravity and a bucket to water his garden instead of the hose—and the city calls it a crime. It reveals the hypocrisy of the environmental bureaucracy: they want you to be sustainable, but only if you pay them for the privilege.
The city attorney’s argument is a masterpiece of legal hallucination. “That constitutes illegal water diversion… Under state water code, all precipitation belongs to the public trust.” This is the language of total control. By defining rain as “precipitation” belonging to the “public trust,” they are nationalizing the weather. They are claiming that every drop of water is a ward of the state. The attorney accuses the man of “hoarding state resources in an unpermitted basin.” The “unpermitted basin” is a bucket. The “hoarding” is a few gallons of water that would have otherwise soaked into the mud or evaporated. The attorney uses high-stakes legal terminology to describe low-stakes gardening to make the “crime” sound severe. He is trying to frame the tomato grower as a water baron, a resource thief who is robbing the community of its hydration.
The judge’s interrogation exposes the absurdity of the state’s position. “Counselor, did he dam a river? Did he block a creek?” These are the traditional definitions of water diversion. Water rights laws were written to prevent someone from cutting off the flow of a river to downstream users. They were designed to manage shared waterways, not private rooftops. The judge is trying to ground the attorney in physical reality. Diverting a river affects the ecosystem and the neighbors. Catching rain on a roof affects… nothing. It actually reduces the burden on the storm drains. The attorney’s admission—”No, your honor, but the watershed”—is the flailing of a man who knows he has lost the argument but is bound by the insanity of his instructions. He clings to the abstract concept of the “watershed” because the concrete facts are against him.
“The state owns the waterways, not the clouds.” This ruling is a vital distinction. The judge draws a line between the terrestrial and the celestial. The state has jurisdiction over the rivers, the lakes, and the aquifers—the “waterways.” These are shared resources. But the clouds? The rain as it falls? That is the domain of nature. To claim ownership of the rain while it is in the air is to claim jurisdiction over the sky. It is a level of totalitarianism that is laughable in its ambition. The judge’s challenge—”Unless you can prove you put that rain up there, you can’t charge him for catching it”—is the perfect rebuttal. It highlights the parasitic nature of the state. The state did not create the rain. It did not transport the rain. It did not facilitate the rain. It did absolutely nothing, yet it demands a cut of the action. It wants to tax a transaction between the atmosphere and the homeowner.
This case also touches on the controversial history of rainwater harvesting laws. In some western states, rainwater collection has technically been illegal under antiquated water rights doctrines that prioritize downstream users. However, these laws are widely recognized as outdated and tyrannical in the context of residential gardening. The fact that the city is enforcing them during a drought—when every drop counts—shows a strict adherence to the letter of the law over the spirit of survival. They would rather the rain wash away into the sewer than let a citizen use it for free. It is about revenue protection. If he catches rain, he uses less city water. If he uses less city water, the water utility makes less money. The “theft” isn’t from the public trust; the theft is from the utility company’s profit margin. The bucket is a competitor to the meter.
The “illegal water diversion” charge is also a way to criminalize self-reliance. If you can catch your own water, grow your own food, and generate your own power, you are less dependent on the system. The system views this independence as a threat. They want you hooked up to the pipes, the wires, and the supply chains. The man with the bucket is a glitch in the matrix of dependence. He is solving a problem without writing a check. That is his true crime.
Ultimately, the judge’s dismissal protects the sanity of the common law. The idea that a man cannot catch rain on his own roof is an affront to the concept of private property. If you own the land, and you own the roof, surely you own the water that lands on it, at least until it leaves your property. To rule otherwise would be to turn every homeowner into a trespasser on their own land, constantly “stealing” the state’s rain by walking in it. The city attorney’s defeat is a victory for common sense, but the fact that he argued it with a straight face is a warning. There are people in power who genuinely believe they own the sky, and they will sue you for looking up with your mouth open if they think they can get away with it. The bucket stays, the tomatoes live, and the state is reminded that its jurisdiction ends where the roof begins.