Which water rules cover exterior cleaning in Naples, Marco Island, Estero and Bonita Springs?

The four places on the roof, paver and window cleaning service area each have a local government of their own. Naples and Marco Island are cities, Estero is a village and Bonita Springs is a city, and an address outside those limits falls under the county it sits in, Collier or Lee, whatever town name it carries.

That matters because the water rules that reach exterior cleaning were written by different bodies. A county ordinance, a city conservation ordinance and a utility's service area each stop at a boundary, and the first document to read is the one whose boundary the property sits inside. When that line is unclear, the local government itself is the one to say which side an address falls on.

One body sits over all four. The South Florida Water Management District lists both Collier and Lee among its counties on its own Who We Are page, so its water shortage plan reaches every one of the four places. Its rule 40E-21.421 authorizes and encourages counties and municipalities to adopt ordinances providing for local enforcement of that plan.

Read in order, the question runs like this:

• An unincorporated address in Collier: the county's summary of Ordinance 2015-27, set out in the next section.
• A City of Bonita Springs address: the city's own summary of its water conservation ordinance.
• A Village of Estero address: the Village of Estero and Bonita Springs Utilities, which provides water service there.
• An unincorporated address in Lee: no water rule for it is quoted on this page, so the county and the water utility serving that address are the offices that answer.
• A City of Naples or City of Marco Island address: that city's own code and its water utility.
• Any of the four during a declared shortage: the district's order, which binds water users there for as long as it runs.

On April 28, 2015 the Collier County Board of County Commissioners adopted Ordinance 2015-27, which makes Phase I Water Restrictions the standard for landscape irrigation in the county. The county's 311 knowledge base publishes a summary of it.

The ordinance's subject is landscape irrigation, and the summary handles washing in a line of its own. The summary says other outdoor water uses, car, truck and boat washing among them, and “the washing of exterior home surfaces and roofs, shall be allowed anytime with the use of Low Volume Pressure Cleaning Equipment, Low Volume Mobile Washing Equipment and/or water hose equipped with an automatic self-canceling or automatic shutoff nozzle.” It then adds a condition that travels with every one of those uses: “In all cases, the water used must drain to a pervious surface or to a water recycling/reuse system.”

Two limits keep that summary in its lane. It names low-volume equipment without defining it, and what counts as low-volume pressure cleaning under the rules is a question of its own. And the article does not say how far the ordinance reaches inside the cities, so this page does not extend it to a Naples or Marco Island address. How the same summary reads on a roof job sits with the water rules on the roof cleaning page.

The article was last updated 9/17/2025. For irrigation-restriction questions it names Customer Service at 239-252-2380, or the district's Water Shortage Watch, which makes it the starting point for an unincorporated address.

Bonita Springs is the one city of the four whose own water summary is quoted here, and on washing it is the plainest document of the set.

The City of Bonita Springs' Neighborhood Services summary of its Water Conservation Ordinance 21-07 says the city supplements the district's year-round rule, Chapter 40E-24, by prohibiting landscape irrigation daily between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. On washing it asks “When can I use a pressure washer?” and answers “Pressure washing is not restricted.” It follows that with a best-practice note to use low-volume equipment and to channel runoff onto grass or another non-paved surface.

An older city code enforcement summary, of Ordinance 06-06, gave the same answer on pressure washing, and a June 2021 city news item says council approved updating the city's water conservation and irrigation regulations, Sec. 42-47, for consistency with Chapters 40E-24 and 40E-21. Neither summary carries a date on its face, so how the ordinance reads today is a question for the city.

Estero is not named in either summary. Bonita Springs Utilities, a not-for-profit, member-owned cooperative founded in 1970, provides service in the City of Bonita Springs and the Village of Estero, but a shared utility is not a shared ordinance. No Estero water rule is quoted on this page; for an Estero address, the Village of Estero and Bonita Springs Utilities are the offices that answer.

The City of Naples and the City of Marco Island publish their own water rules, and neither is quoted here. For an address inside either city, that city's code and its water utility hold the answer, and the county summary above is not read as speaking for them.

Chapter 40E-21 is the South Florida Water Management District's water shortage plan, required under Section 373.246(1), Florida Statutes. It applies to all water users, including those exempt from permitting, except users whose only source is treated effluent or seawater.

Its restrictions are written phase by phase, and each phase's text opens the same way: the restrictions “shall apply when a Phase I water shortage is declared by the District”, and likewise for Phases II, III and IV. Read on those terms, each water shortage phase is a set of rules waiting on a declaration rather than a rule in force every day. Once one is declared, using water inconsistently with the restrictions is prohibited, and each water user has the duty to stay informed of the phase in effect.

While a declaration stands, the district says, it overrides both the district's own year-round irrigation rule and local landscape watering ordinances. That year-round rule, Chapter 40E-24, is mandatory and permanent, but it addresses landscape irrigation, not pressure cleaning.

What a warning, a declaration and a modified order each do is set out in whether a water shortage warning restricts roof cleaning. The district's water shortage page carries whether one is in force, and the Naples water calendar follows the county's standing rule and the district's plan through the year.