PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2015-04-13 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Did an Oregon Man Get a Prison Sentence for Collecting Rainwater on His Own Property? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • On 11 April 2015, the website YourNewsWire.com published an article titled Man Gets Prison Sentence for Collecting Rainwater on His Own Property that quickly drew widespread interest on social media due to its alarming claims. The article (to which was appended a photograph of a clearly distraught man) described the purported plight of Oregon resident Gary Harrington, who supposedly had been just sentenced to prison for the simple act of collecting rainwater on his own property, even though rainwater collection is a popular and common practice among farmers and self-sufficient Americans. According to the article's leading paragraphs, Harrington fell victim to (unspecified) new laws enacted over the past few years that forbade the collection of rainwater by citizens, and he found himself in a situation that could happen to everyone interested in collecting rainwater on their own privately-held land: The article's initial tone led readers to believe that Harrington was (at the time) in jail over what looked to be increased governmental restrictions on homesteading or survivalist behaviors. But the piece continued with quotes pasted from earlier articles which expanded the initial context and the complexity of the situation in a manner that almost entirely negated the piece's earlier paragraphs. First, the source article for the 11 April 2015 YourNewsWire.com piece had been published on 26 July 2012, nearly three years earlier. Harrington hadn't just (been) sentenced to prison for rainwater collection, as the described culmination of his legal battle had occurred several years prior to the rumor's 2015 revival. And that wasn't the only misleading aspect of the claim. A press release (issued on 29 July 2012 by the Oregon Water Resources Department and published by Eugene television station KVAL) was prefaced with the information that it was legal to collect rainwater off of surfaces like roofs or tarps, (but) property owners need to obtain permits before altering or collecting flowing bodies of water. Harrington's case was described as one that was far in excess of an individual's simple collection of rainwater: An article published in the Medford Mail Tribune on 26 April 2013 quoted Jackson County Circuit Judge Lorenzo Mejia, who had sentenced Harrington, as chastising Harrington for his non-compliance with previous court rulings and admonishing him for misrepresenting his case to the media: Although in a strictly literal sense Oregon resident Gary Harrington was indeed sentenced to prison for collecting rainwater, that sentence followed several years of legal dispute over what the state continually described his willful and flagrant operation of a number of illegal reservoirs. Moreover, Harrington's dispute with water authorities in Oregon was not first disclosed in 2015 (nor even in 2012), as police had been publicly involved in investigating his water collection issues as early as 2002. Finally, the laws in question are not new laws aimed at criminalizing water collection in Oregon or elsewhere; rather, the law that Harrington was found to be in violation of was passed in 1925, and the cited case involving Harrington's large (illegal) reservoirs was decided in 2007. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url