Heres an interesting question
If you have a ready made Water supply on your Land and you wish to Utilise it entirely for your own needs Business & Domestic purposes
and Waste Products were removed by a contractor
Do the Utilities Provider who may supply Water
and Drainage need to be Paid even though you are not connected and Nearby Houses/farms are?
On a Side note Local to me there are Many drainage ditches and to keep these Maintained the Utilities Authority(and others) post (in the local paper) Differing amounts per year of water extracted Ahead of time Why should the amount be posted ahead? Current Weather surely dictates how much the Flow is regulated strikes a balance Its not as if they are Draining the entire area dry There are no Levees Only a manmade Bank by the river /Canal mouth.
Mainly a grid of 6 to 8 foot wide water filled Ditches!(over 30 square miles) Many with sluice gates which are never opened Why? Has baffled me since I was a kid

I do not know how they do it 6 miles west of Wigan.

Around here if you have a septic system and a well you do NOT pay for the service of water and sewage.

Recently - Alright a decade is not 'recent' - anyway - recently they build human farms across the street (exchanged grapes and almonds to raise humans in 'suburbs') although they laid supply and sewage in the middle the street, they did not hook up any of the existing properties. No one on this side was 'taxed' or forced to pay for the privilege to have the road tore up and have an ugly suburban tract put in.

BUT the laws changed in the way of code. If anything goes wrong with septic systems then you have to shell out the 24-25 thousand dollars to have your house hooked up to the sewage.

If your well goes dry, or wasn't deep enough to where when the water table goes down to the point you can't use the pump then you must hook up to city supply.

Then you are only charged for the hook up and the use of that one utility. The City and County figure that eventually all of the septic systems will fail and that all of the wells will go dry.

Oh by Law one has to have the septic tank and something like 75% of the leech lines removed in order to hook up to the city sewage - can't just leave the tank and lines in place.

I do not know why they post amounts of water extracted ahead of time for drainage ditches.

Around here we have the canal system, it is used to supply water to all of the agriculture. Each year an estimate of water usage is posted, that sets the rates for this year for water. That posting is usually after the wet season (winter) and is based on snow pack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of here.

A lot of the county properties have access to use X amount of cubic feet of water (or acreage of water - however its measured) and the 'estimated' water sets how much each acre of land is allowed to get.

Our canals look like ditches - they range from 6 to 20 feet across, with a lot of sluice gates and water controls. From the canals there are underground pipes with controls at crossing streets and controls at each outlet at private property.

During the El Nino year of '98 they had to go around and open up the canals - too much rain lead to the potential of flooding.

The canals around here are designed to handle a lot of run off, but there are a few years when rainfall surpasses their design. There are even 'county owned' properties along rivers that have the river side canal wall lower than the other - this allows canal flooding a 'safe' place to flood over and out of the system.

There is one on the far side of our river. The airport (built up land fill) is on the 'high' side, the low side is the natural flood plain. In '98 the whole low side was flooded, and part of the airport was slightly underwater.

SOoooo (to make a long story short - TOO LATE!)...

It is possible that your ditches are part of the flood control system and maybe used for irrigate further up or down the line.

Thanks David
The answers I have from other places broadly say the same as yourself

In the really rural parts of the UK & Ireland Hooking up to the Mains is Not viable so You see Many properties Using Septic tanks and Tapping Springs
On the Most Primitive level there are still old Houses which rely on Buckets of water from a communal water Pump and Tippler Toilets ,especially in the Irish Republic

quote:

Originally posted by bedstor:
Thanks David
The answers I have from other places broadly say the same as yourself

In the really rural parts of the UK & Ireland Hooking up to the Mains is Not viable so You see Many properties Using Septic tanks and Tapping Springs
On the Most Primitive level there are still old Houses which rely on Buckets of water from a communal water Pump and Tippler Toilets ,especially in the Irish Republic

Ooooo sounds like Fun!



NOT!

As a kid we had running water - if you ran it from the cistern to the house.