Petaluma, CA Water Use Rules: Turf Replacement Rebates (2026)

Petaluma's Landscape Water Use Efficiency Standards, adopted by Ordinance 2562 NCS in 2016, apply to new construction with an aggregate landscape area of five hundred square feet or more and to rehabilitation projects reaching two thousand five hundred square feet within a twelve-month period, whenever the project needs a building permit, plan check or design review. 050(A)(4)(e), turf cannot exceed twenty percent of the landscape area on a residential project, and nonresidential landscapes cannot have any turf at all except in a designated special landscape area.

The same subsection bars turf on slopes steeper than a one-foot rise for every four feet of run, and prohibits it in street parkways narrower than ten feet unless the parkway sits next to a parking strip used to enter and exit vehicles; any turf allowed in a wider parkway must be irrigated by sub-surface drip or another technology that produces no overspray. 050(B)(1) repeats the twenty percent cap as a project-wide standard tied to the water budget calculation: high water use plants, including turf, cannot exceed twenty percent of a residential landscape's total irrigated area, and the maximum applied water allowed for a residential project is fifty-five percent of the reference evapotranspiration rate, dropping to forty-five percent for nonresidential sites. 070.