City Council approves water recycling requirement for new commercial buildings

On-site Non-Potable Water Reuse Practice Guide courtesy of the William J Worthen Foundation, 2018

Sacramento, CA (Dec. 13, 2022) The Sacramento City Council Tuesday approved an ordinance that requires new commercial buildings to have plumbing that allows water to be recycled for irrigation or other non-potable uses.

Water recycling systems, or “dual plumbing,” allow water to be used twice before it flows to the sewage system. A common example is plumbing which captures water from a handwashing sink and uses it for toilet flushing or landscape watering.

“Putting forward and passing aggressive and common sense changes to our building code is putting Sacramento on the right path to have a more resilient and climate-friendly city,” said Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

The new dual plumbing requirements go into effect on July 1, 2023, with two tiers of requirements based on the size of the building. Permits on buildings 10,000 square feet or larger will require gray water systems for irrigation, while buildings containing more than 50,000 square feet of space will need to install dual plumbing that would allow for a gray water recycling system.

Map courtesy of drought.ca.gov

“New construction with dual plumbing systems will help make our city more resilient and better prepared to deal with ongoing severe drought,” said Yvette Rincon, Chief of Staff to the Director of Utilities for the City of Sacramento.

The dual plumbing ordinance also expands opportunities for plumbers and pipefitters by increasing the linear feet of piping and plumbing required in new construction.

Despite a recent storm system that brought much-needed rain to the Sacramento Valley, California is still in the midst of a historic drought. According to the California State Department of Water Resources, on Oct. 1, 2022, California entered a fourth consecutive year of extreme drought. The three-year period from 2020 - 2022 is the driest on record going back to 1896.