Yuba City, CA Landscaping Rules: Water Restrictions (2026)

19 gives the City Council authority to activate emergency water restrictions when water supply conditions justify it. Once declared, the applicable stage of the Water Shortage Contingency Plan, part of the City's adopted Urban Water Management Plan, governs what irrigation, landscape watering, or other use limits apply; that plan, not the code text itself, sets the specific watering-day schedules and use cutbacks for each stage. The section also builds in a stringency rule common to California water ordinances: if any provision of the chapter conflicts or overlaps with a mandatory state water-conservation regulation, whichever rule is more stringent controls.

This matters in drought years when the State Water Resources Control Board or the Governor imposes statewide emergency regulations that can be tighter than the City's own plan. Because the restrictions are triggered by declaration rather than printed as a permanent ordinance, a homeowner checking for landscaping watering rules should first confirm whether the City Council currently has an active emergency declaration in place, since outside of a declared emergency there is no standing watering-day restriction in the municipal code itself. 20, the chapter's general enforcement measures, which apply penalties on an escalating scale tied to the responsible party for the property, meaning the owner, lessee, tenant, or the person the water bill is addressed to.