A small town in south-eastern Colorado was recently declared abandoned after all of its local public leaders resigned amid a drinking water supply crisis.
The office of Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, announced the fate of Hartman on 29 July, a little more than a month after being advised in writing that the town “had lacked chlorine in its water for [more than] one month and the water was not potable and ‘smells horrible’”, according to public documents.
Hartman resident, landowner and voter Jessie Simmons had also written to Griswold’s office that “the town … had been under an order to boil water for months”, documents said.
The documents added that Hartman “had no board of trustees or town clerk, was unable to hold a [local] election, and owned infrastructure critical for the treatment or delivery of water to residents” that – barring a successful appeal – would become the responsibility of surrounding Prowers county’s government.
Hartman had a population of fewer than 60 at the time of the 2020 US census – before it was declared abandoned under a Colorado state law allowing for the dissolution of incorporated communities which can no longer maintain a government.
Colorado’s Denver Post newspaper described the administrative failure of Hartman as having “no analog in recent state history”.
Actually you can have two rain collection barrels
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb16-1005
Although legally it can’t be used for drinking, only for gardening
which doesn’t help at all. and you can’t use those barrels during droughts… even for gardening.
it’s one of those stupid laws where state wise you can do it but federal law says you can’t do it. and federal trumps state especially when Trump is in charge.
The concern about collecting rain water in Colorado is that if enough people did it there’d be nothing to flow downhill to feed all the towns with drinking water and power from dams. This, of course, happened all on its own anyway.
There’re a whole bunch of things going on here not the least of which is that if all the dice roll the wrong way, the stars go exactly wrong, the law created a circumstance where you’re legally expected to stand outside in a rainstorm with a cup in hand and die of dehydration. That’s my weak understanding of it.