On 1/5/2011 11:56 AM, Edge wrote:
I know its winter. But being retired and with idle thoughts I am
looking at my neighbor's rain barrel that during the summer collects
rain runoff from his roof to water his plants. Our houses in the
development have basements with sump pumps. My own sump pump goes off
more regularly than it rains around here in the summer. Since the sump
collects clean ground water, is it okay to divert that water to a rain
barrel? Seems a better idea than dumping and wasting that water into
the storm sewers.

Where I live it is illegal to drain a sump pump into the sewer system;
it *must* be discharged somewhere on the property. So yes, people do
pump it out onto their lawns or gardens. For that matter, people with
lakeshore property frequently water with water pumped from the lake,
and that's for sure going to have more collected runoff in it than
whatever you collect just from your property.