Joliet, IL Water Use Rules: Recycled Water Rules (2026)

Section 31-126 of the City Code, titled Limitation of Water Usage, sets Joliet's outdoor and indoor water conservation rules under the department of public utilities. Within the outdoor conservation measures, subsection (a)(3) singles out recycled water: irrigation drawn from a recycled water system is allowed any time and on any day, unlike irrigation from the city's public water supply, which is otherwise restricted to set morning and evening hours on an odd/even address schedule. The same subsection requires that recycled system components be identified as non-potable water sources, so cross-connections and misuse are visible to inspectors and to anyone servicing the system.

On the indoor side, subsection (b)(2) extends the recycling requirement to businesses: all new and remodeled commercial car-wash installations in the city must be equipped with a water recycling system, reducing the potable water those facilities draw from the combined waterworks and sewerage system described earlier in Chapter 31. The department of public utilities is authorized under subsection (c) to develop and implement public programs encouraging efficient water use by both residential and commercial or industrial customers, and subsection (d) lets the city manager or a designee further restrict water use by executive order, published in a local newspaper, when the public welfare requires it.

Because recycled water use sits outside the standard hourly and day-of-week limits, it is the one irrigation method in the ordinance that is not tied to the address-based schedule enforced elsewhere in the section.