About the Ordinance:

The State of California recently passed Assembly Bill 1881 with regard to water efficient landscape requirements. The Bill requires that all Cities adopt an ordinance that complies with the water efficient landscape requirements by January 1, 2010. The Bill affects both new and altered residential and commercial landscape areas, but existing landscape areas do not need to comply.

The new ordinance outlines a formula to create a water “budget” for new or altered landscape areas over 1,500 square feet. Based upon the size of the landscape area and the evapotranspiration (ET) rate of the City (currently 39.7) a maximum applied water allowance is established. Once the “allowance” is determined the landscape area must then be designed to use at, or less, water than the allowance. The ordinance also limits the amount of turf within a landscaped area and requires commercial projects to use all water wise plants as designated by the State. Furthermore, there are irrigation standards included in the ordinance such as no over-spray onto impervious surfaces, and to use drip irrigation when possible. 

Read the Landscape Ordinance online.