Water restrictions in Daly City, CA — also called the watering schedule, outdoor irrigation rules, or drought ordinance — set which days and hours you can run sprinklers or irrigation.
Daly City enforces California's permanent water-waste prohibitions, including no irrigation runoff onto sidewalks and no outdoor watering within 48 hours of a quarter inch of rain. For landscape projects regulated under Daly City Municipal Code Chapter 17.41, overhead irrigation must be scheduled between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m.
Daly City operates its own water utility and publishes the State Water Resources Control Board's statewide restrictions on its Water Conservation page, noting that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (the city's wholesale supplier) rescinded its Water Shortage Emergency Declaration in April 2023 while the statewide rules remain in effect. Locally, Daly City Municipal Code Chapter 17.41 (Water Conservation in Landscaping, Ord. No. 1407, adopted Feb. 22, 2016) implements the state Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance. Section 17.41.130 requires irrigation schedules to be regulated by automatic controllers and limits overhead irrigation to between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m. unless weather conditions prevent it, with the stricter rule applying if the water purveyor's allowable hours differ. Section 17.41.030 requires owners of existing landscapes over one acre to maintain irrigation facilities to prevent water waste and runoff.
Under section 17.41.210, the city may serve a notice of correction giving the property owner 90 days to take corrective action, and may enforce violations through administrative orders under the process in Municipal Code section 8.16.100 et seq., which allows administrative penalties of up to $2,500 per day (capped at $10,000 per related series of violations). Statewide water-waste prohibitions are separately enforceable as infractions under state law.
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