Margate, FL Water Use Rules: Recycled Water Rules (2026)

Code § 39-71(e) is Margate's recycled water provision for utility customers. It applies where a customer believes that significant recycling of water through water-cooled air conditioning and like improvements will substantially diminish the water discharged into the sanitary wastewater system. That customer applies to the Department of Environmental and Engineering Services and pays the cost and installation of a flow meter that measures the recycling of water provided. Monthly water recycling is then deducted from the charges under § 39-71(a), and only after the customer has paid the service availability charge and the capacity reservation charge.

The credit is arithmetic, not discretionary. The code multiplies the number of gallons registered on the flow meter connected to the air conditioning cooling water tower by the applicable wastewater rate per thousand gallons, and the result is subtracted from the sewer portion of the monthly utility billing. The wastewater rates themselves are set by resolution of the City Commission for single-family, multifamily and nonresidential users, and users outside municipal boundaries pay a twenty-five percent surcharge.

Two city controls keep the credit honest. Every meter measuring recycled water has to stay accessible to the City so that employees of the Department of Environmental and Engineering Services can read it, and the city runs periodic inspections to determine that recycled water is being utilized for the use intended.

Reclaimed water for irrigation is handled elsewhere in the code. Section 39-56 exempts reclaimed water and its users from the 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. irrigation hours, and also exempts users irrigating with seventy-five percent or more water recovered from an aquifer storage and recovery system, though lake and canal water does not count. The Land Development Code, § 40.704, says reclaimed or non-potable water should be used for irrigation if the City Utilities Department determines an acceptable source is available, and it exempts irrigation systems supplied with reclaimed water from the watering-day limits. If the City can supply reclaimed water to a site, a different local water provider must allow that use unless a statute prohibits it.