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Many, if not all, RVs have sewage collection tanks and there are places to dump them legally.
Most likely very few of them are hauling their RVs to a place (who knows how far away) that they can clean out their tank. They are located in the rural desert.
Same with garbage dumps. There are legal places to dump garbage but there are lots of illegal dumps that popped up.
This sounds like some kind of scheme in an attempt to correct bad planning by the county government.
Problem appears to be lack of infrastructure while selling off chunks of property to people who are looking for cheap land. 800 people have moved there in the past few years, if this is a one horse county, then that's a lot of people, and someone should have taken charge of that and acted to expand services.
There is property tax in the area, so the county government should be providing at least some additional services for these people (after all we don't pay taxes because it's good for the soul). Illegal dumping may be an issue, but you'd need to be careful who's responsible, more than once long term "regular" residents can start dumping in areas to cause friction and strife to newcomers of less orthodox persuasions, or even "regular" residents have been dumping in areas for years that everyone was blind to, but now it's an issue because other people are doing the same.
Meanwhile, I don't see why there's an issue with people living in RV's or tents, or even under a tarp on their property, it is their property after all. Local ordinances should manage things like waste, so deal with that issue as that issue, don't leverage or change some other law or ordinance to try to fix a different issue.
The underlying opposition to people living on their land, even with proper water supplies and sanitation, in a RV is lack of taxable property. An RV is taxed as a vehicle and that only when it is registered with the DMV. An unregistered RV does not have a large, or maybe any, assessable value so the local government cannot collect very much property tax.
Generally the local government will grouse about what they consider a bunch of radical slobs living in the desert but without the property tax consideration the county would just try to forget anyone was there.
As always just follow the money and you will find the reason for the harassment.
Costilla County, CO — Across the U.S., local zoning officials are making it increasingly difficult for people to go off the grid, in some instances threatening people with jail time for collecting rainwater or not hooking into local utilities.
They know RAINWATER has more good properties than what comes out of our tap!! (Which is dumbed down/dead water)
Most likely very few of them are hauling their RVs to a place (who knows how far away) that they can clean out their tank. They are located in the rural desert.
Same with garbage dumps. There are legal places to dump garbage but there are lots of illegal dumps that popped up.
So they should enforce laws against illegal dumping, not stop people from campingl
Small government would enforce dumping laws.
Big Government stops people from camping on their own land.
This sounds like some kind of scheme in an attempt to correct bad planning by the county government.
Problem appears to be lack of infrastructure while selling off chunks of property to people who are looking for cheap land. 800 people have moved there in the past few years, if this is a one horse county, then that's a lot of people, and someone should have taken charge of that and acted to expand services.
There is property tax in the area, so the county government should be providing at least some additional services for these people (after all we don't pay taxes because it's good for the soul). Illegal dumping may be an issue, but you'd need to be careful who's responsible, more than once long term "regular" residents can start dumping in areas to cause friction and strife to newcomers of less orthodox persuasions, or even "regular" residents have been dumping in areas for years that everyone was blind to, but now it's an issue because other people are doing the same.
Meanwhile, I don't see why there's an issue with people living in RV's or tents, or even under a tarp on their property, it is their property after all. Local ordinances should manage things like waste, so deal with that issue as that issue, don't leverage or change some other law or ordinance to try to fix a different issue.
This is true. And illegal dumping is unrelated to camping.
The underlying opposition to people living on their land, even with proper water supplies and sanitation, in a RV is lack of taxable property. An RV is taxed as a vehicle and that only when it is registered with the DMV. An unregistered RV does not have a large, or maybe any, assessable value so the local government cannot collect very much property tax.
Generally the local government will grouse about what they consider a bunch of radical slobs living in the desert but without the property tax consideration the county would just try to forget anyone was there.
As always just follow the money and you will find the reason for the harassment.
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