Well, yeah, these are the answers I expected -- and I'm glad to have backup. If something is *changed* then the uphill folks might be held responsible. This is very good to know, just in case that guy sells to a developer and suddenly our stream becomes a river.
Nothing we've done or plan to do will impact the amount or direction of water funneled downhill. As rambler said, we're diverting it around our stuff, but not into someone else's place. There's a decent sized culvert along the road, connected with pipes under everyone's driveways, that leads down the road eventually dumping into a creek.
The trick is to get it from the top of the hill, where it collects in a small streamlet, around our barn where it mingles with runoff from the barn roof, and channel it into the narrow slot between the garden, pool and house, thence under the fence and through a less-sloped wooded lot toward the drainage culvert.
I told the landscape guys what we really needed was a dry creek bed. They scoffed and said a wall would do the trick, along with a little bit of "natural" contouring. But it's OK. It doesn't usually pour rain like it did last week - not so much all at once - we can add that dry creek bed gradually. It'll be fun.
