“We’re not talking about a little runoff - he had stored 13 million gallons of water...”
His land. Rainwater. Still don’t see the crime here. To my knowledge he was never accused of diverting a river or a stream, was he?
If he hadn’t captured the rainwater, it would indeed have been runoff.
Yes, he was, and that was the entire point. He was diverting one of the tributaries of the stream that Medford gets it's drinking water from.