Inglewood, CA Landscaping Rules: Rainwater Harvesting (2026)

Section 10571 explains why the Legislature acted: as impervious surfaces from buildings, parking lots, and roads have grown, more stormwater runs off directly to the ocean instead of recharging groundwater, while recurring drought made local water supply augmentation and a 20-percent cut in urban per-capita water use by 2020 a state priority. Section 10573 supplies the operative definitions: a "rain barrel system" is a rainwater capture system that uses no electricity or water pump and is not connected to or reliant on a potable water system, while a "rainwater capture system" more broadly means any facility designed to capture, retain, and store rooftop rainwater for later onsite use, and "rainwater" itself means precipitation that has not yet entered a storm drain, flood channel, or other stream channel.

Section 10574 is the core rule: use of rainwater collected from rooftops does not require a water right permit under Water Code Section 1201. Section 10572 then narrows what the exemption does not do: it does not alter or impair existing water rights, does not change existing water rights law, does not affect use of rainwater on agricultural lands, and critically does not authorize a landscape contractor to perform work requiring a license under the Professional Engineers Act, nor does it impair the California Building Standards Commission's authority to set building standards for rainwater capture systems or a water supplier's authority under Title 17 of the California Code of Regulations.

An Inglewood property owner still needs any required local building or plumbing permit and a properly licensed installer for larger systems, even though no separate water right permit applies. Inglewood's own stormwater ordinance recognizes the same practice: Municipal Code Section 10-208 lets development and redevelopment projects count "rainfall harvest and use" toward the on-site stormwater retention volume the City's Low Impact Development rules require, including as relief when full on-site retention proves technically infeasible.