Newport Beach, CA Water Use Rules: Recycled Water Rules (2026)

010 to cut demand for potable drinking water. The code defines recycled water as nonpotable, treated wastewater used for landscape irrigation, listing park landscape areas, school landscape areas, roadway medians and parkways, and golf course landscaping as the covered uses. Any customer connected to the recycled water system pays three separate charges, each set by City Council resolution and each taking effect January 1st of every year. First, a monthly fixed recycled water service charge is billed per meter; it recaptures the city's cost to operate and maintain the recycled water distribution system, including required capital infrastructure improvements, but it specifically excludes pump station maintenance, repairs, and improvements.

Second, a monthly commodity charge is a per-unit charge tied to the volume the city actually buys from OCWD; if OCWD's wholesale cost rises faster than the city's own projected purchase rate, the code allows the commodity charge to be adjusted annually to track that increase. Third, customers who receive recycled water through a pump station pay a separate monthly pump station charge, which recaptures the cost to operate, repair, maintain, and replace the pump stations needed to deliver that water. The chapter was adopted by Ordinance 2014-13 in 2014 and has not been amended since, so the fee categories themselves are fixed even though the dollar amounts move annually by resolution rather than by ordinance.

Because the rates are set administratively each year, current dollar figures live in the city's separately adopted fee schedule rather than in the code text itself, and customers billed for recycled water service should check that schedule rather than assume a flat figure from prior years.