Santa Cruz County, CA Landscaping Rules: Rainwater Harvesting (2026)

Santa Cruz County's Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance treats rainwater harvesting as an encouraged best-management practice, not a permit requirement of its own. SCCC § 13.13.060(F)(6) states that stormwater best management practices to control runoff and increase on-site filtration are strongly encouraged, and lists as recommended elements minimizing impervious surfaces and directing runoff into planting beds, and to incorporate rain gardens, cisterns, and other rain harvesting or catchment systems, along with infiltration beds, swales, basins, drywells and constructed wetlands. None of these BMPs is mandatory under Chapter 13.13; the operative language throughout is "encouraged" or "recommended," so a Santa Cruz County landscape plan can rely on rain barrels, cisterns or a rain garden to manage runoff without the County dictating a specific design.

Rainwater harvesting carries two concrete benefits elsewhere in the chapter. First, SCCC § 13.13.030(D)(2)(g) exempts from the entire chapter any landscape irrigated entirely by graywater, captured rainwater or recycled water, meaning a project that runs solely on harvested rainwater need not comply with the water-budget, turf-limit or irrigation-equipment standards that otherwise apply. Second, SCCC § 13.13.040(B)(2) lets a project where captured rainwater, graywater or recycled water supplies at least 30 percent of estimated water use submit the simpler landscape checklist instead of a full landscape plan, cutting the paperwork tied to a building or grading permit. These provisions sit inside Chapter 13.13, which otherwise applies to new, expanded or rehabilitated landscapes tied to a building, grading or discretionary permit under SCCC § 13.13.030(A), subject to the 500-square-foot residential exemption in SCCC § 13.13.030(D)(1).