"According to Oregon water laws, all water is publicly owned. Therefore, anyone who wants to store any type of water on their property must first obtain a permit from state water managers."
and
"They issued me my permits. I had my permits in hand and they retracted them just arbitrarily, basically. They took them back and said ‘No, you can’t have them,’ so I’ve been fighting it ever since,' Harrington told CNSNews.com."
and
“Way back in 1925 the city of Medford got a unique withdrawal that withdrew all -- supposedly all -- the water out of a single basin and supposedly for the benefit of the city of Medford,” Harrington told CNSNews.com.
^ That started a legal excuse to charge people money under State law; construed legal excuse. (A good reason to try to change who votes on things)
"Harrington told CNSNews.com, however, that the 1925 law doesn’t mention anything about colleting rainwater or snow melt -- and he believes that he has been falsely accused. “The withdrawal said the stream and its tributaries. It didn’t mention anything about rainwater and it didn’t mention anything about snow melt and it didn’t mention anything about diffused water, but yet now, they’re trying to expand that to include that rain water and they’re using me as the goat to do it”
That sounds like the combination of a likely personal dispute and state laws that were designed to protect their cities- but being construed by cities, cops, prosecutors, and judges to charge people money under the authority of police.