Here in the U.K., if you have a watercourse running through your land, or past your property, and you want to set up a turbine to generate power, you have to pay for an abstraction licence to he local water authority, even if the water source is yours.
Now abstraction means taking water from a surface or underground source and conveying it to a distribution centre or to a treatment centre. So, as a turbine relies on the continuous flow of water through it to function, the water flowing uninterrupted along its course, or possibly having a millrace to maintain a head of water, no water is removed.
So how can it be justified to force people to pay someone else for the use of their own water?
Water rights are inherently complicated. The idea that you “own” all the water that passes through your property is kind of like claiming to own all the air that passes through your property.
When you divert water from a stream that runs through your land then it means everyone downstream from you gets less. When you force that water through a turbine to generate power it means that you’re potentially impacting the migration of fish or other life up and down the stream. Even pumping water out of a well on your own property will draw from the same water table that your neighbors depend on.
We are all connected. Any reasonable water management laws must recognize this.
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I guess we’ll have to make more Brawndo
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