Does the government own the rain?

http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html

Apparently, the government is allowed to regulate the water that naturally falls from the sky… sounds completely unnatural and nonsensical to me. Many states, mainly in the western U.S.  have passed laws prohibiting people from collecting rain water for personal use. The government claims these laws are in place so that the rivers/other water systems are not disrupted, but that argument was easily disproved in the article. A study was conducted in a particular county where these laws exist, which revealed that only about three percent of rain water actually makes it back into the rivers and streams which the government claims people are hurting.  With that being said, what is it that’s so bad about citizens collecting rainwater?

In my opinion, nothing; just people of the earth trying to make use of another “part” (water) of our planet in a positive and beneficial way. It seems clear why the government doesn’t like people collecting rain water; our government and almost everything in society revolves around/is driven by money. Nobody has to pay for the rain, therefore the people collecting it have a lower water bill, which means less revenue for the government. The more people collecting rain, the less money for the government.

This whole story is ridiculous to me; that these people think they have authority over nature, and how it is used by other parts of nature, us (easy to forget humans are nature). Especially considering there is no violence involved whatsoever, nothing but positive use of nature, it bothers me that our government tries to prohibit things like this. I thought I read somewhere in something called the… constitution? that the power in this country is supposed to come from the people, and what they think is right. To me this this is just another example of our rights slowly but surely being taken away right in front of us. I wonder why less people are aware of these types of stories and trying to do something about them, instead of camping out in front of the apple store when a new iPhone comes out. It is a reminder of the sad but true fact of the controlling power that money has on most of the people in the world, and how it has skewed people priorities/morals.