By State › Florida

Florida: Laws & Legal Considerations

Download all of Florida as PDF Print

Rainwater harvesting: no state permit for typical residential use

Florida law doesn’t broadly restrict collecting rainwater on your own property, and the state actively frames it as a way to reduce demand on municipal supply.

RuleFlorida
Source water Rooftop or other on-property catchment
Permit required No, for typical residential barrels/cisterns
Permitted uses Non-potable: irrigation, vehicle washing, toilet flushing, pool filling
Underlying statutes Florida Statutes §373 (water resources) and §373.62 (rainwater/graywater use)

Local rules can be stricter than the state's

Counties and municipalities can and do add their own requirements on top of the state baseline, covering things like roof material, drainage impact, and system size. Miami-Dade County, for example, requires a site plan review for any system holding more than 1,000 gallons. Check your specific county or city before installing anything beyond a basic rain barrel.

Where to find it: the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (floridadep.gov) administers state water law; your county’s building or environmental resources department handles local permitting questions.

Water rights: purely riparian, unlike Utah, Oregon, or Texas

Utah, Oregon, and Texas’s surface water all run on some form of prior appropriation (“first in time, first in right”). Florida doesn’t use that system at all for its lakes, rivers, and streams; it uses riparian rights instead, a fundamentally different logic tied to owning land that touches the water, not to who claimed it first.

ConceptHow it works in Florida
Who holds the right Owners of land bordering a natural watercourse (a lake, river, or stream)
Governing principle "Reasonable use": each riparian owner may use a reasonable share of the water, without unreasonably interfering with other riparian owners' same right
How rights transfer Appurtenant to the land itself; they transfer automatically with the property, not held or lost independently
State's role Holds title to submerged sovereign lands in trust for the public; riparian rights are qualified by this public trust doctrine, not absolute

Why this is a genuinely different system, not just different terminology

Under prior appropriation, a senior water right holder can, in a real shortage, take their full allotment before a junior right holder gets any water at all, regardless of whether the junior holder also borders the water source. Under Florida’s riparian system, every riparian landowner on a shared water body is entitled to a reasonable share simultaneously; there’s no seniority ranking among them. This is a structurally different way of allocating scarce water, not a regional variation on the same idea.

Where to find it: the Florida Water Resources Act (Chapter 373, Florida Statutes) and Florida’s five Water Management Districts administer permitting for larger consumptive uses beyond ordinary riparian rights; see floridadep.gov/water for district contacts.

Permitless carry since 2023, in the country’s most populous permitless-carry state

Florida joined the permitless carry group in 2023, becoming, alongside Texas, one of the two states covered here where most adults can carry a concealed handgun without a license at all.

RequirementDetail
Standard Permitless concealed carry for handguns since July 2023 (HB 543); the state-issued Concealed Weapon License (CWL) remains available and is administered by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
Minimum age, permitless carry 21, with exceptions for active-duty military and honorably discharged veterans
Minimum age, CWL 18, following a 2026 state appellate ruling (Eubanks v. Florida) striking down the prior 21-and-over requirement specifically for the licensed pathway
Disqualifiers Felony conviction; certain violent misdemeanor convictions within the past 3 years; chronic substance abuse or involuntary mental health commitment history

Why the CWL still matters even though it's no longer required

A Florida CWL provides reciprocity in states that don’t recognize Florida’s permitless carry but do recognize its license, skips the federal firearm-purchase waiting period, and serves as a form of ID. It’s optional for carrying within Florida itself, but far from redundant for anyone who travels.

Sources