St. Lucie County, FL Landscaping Rules: Rainwater Harvesting (2026)

Chapter 20, Article X sets a twice-weekly landscape irrigation schedule for unincorporated county water users, but § 20-308 carves out specific exceptions to that schedule. daily irrigation ban that otherwise governs everyone else's schedule under § 20-307. The county's definitions section, § 20-305, backs this up: low volume irrigation is defined as equipment designed to deliver water at a rate matched to the plant's actual need and place it efficiently in the root zone, while micro-irrigation covers bubbler, drip, trickle, mist, microspray, or subsurface delivery along a line.

Harvested rainwater applied through a rain barrel or cistern falls outside the metered, district-supplied water resource the rest of Article X is built to conserve, so the ordinance treats it as exempt rather than regulated. The exemption sits inside the same article that applies to every user drawing landscape irrigation water in the unincorporated county (§ 20-306), so it is a genuine carve-out from an otherwise binding schedule, not a separate permit program; no registration or fee attaches to using a rain barrel or cistern for irrigation.