I have planted seeds from round up ready soy beans. They grew just fine for my needs, which wasn't farming. Farmers have also planted harvested hybrid seeds, Monsanto sues the ones they catch, because it's a contract violation for those that bought seeds.
A culture was developed during a period of racism that discouraged activities beneficial a thriving community, because they were denied in a racist era. That culture hasn't adapted to a less racist era.
Could they? Yes. Would they? Almost definitely not for most cases. There's plenty of crimes they can hit you with if you happen to get on the government's shit list. A month of active surveillance would give them evidence for a laundry list of felonies. Taking covert action to plant fake evidence is a level of risk that isn't worth it for the average person. If you happen to be a state level threat that calculus can change.
Whether it's public or private has no real bearing on my point though. Water consumption is priced to cover the cost of delivering the water. That isn't the case in international shipping, the more packages from China for the USPS, the more money they lose.
Just because it's a service doesn't mean it has to operate at a loss. Water is a service too, but you can't bankrupt the water company by using 300x as much water.
They can't go over the people with a 300 page tax return that uses past paper losses to cover any actual income. They already automated enforcement of w2 based income.
It would constitute theft.