Torrance Municipal Code Art. 2 Surface Waters

Surface water or surface waters are hereby defined to mean water falling on and naturally spreading over lands, as it may come from seasonal rains, and before such waters have found their way into a natural watercourse.

Surface waters are distinguished from flood waters by the fact that flood waters have broken away from a stream while surface waters have not yet become part of a watercourse.

No person shall build, construct, erect or maintain upon any private property within the City limits any dam, dike, culvert, ditch, embankment, barricade or other impediment of any nature, kind or character, or maintain the same, which will tend to hinder, delay, obstruct or stop, or which does stop, the flow onto his land of what are technically known as surface waters, to such an extent that any public street or alley in the City is flooded or damaged as the proximate result of the building, erection, construction or maintaining of any such dam, dike, culvert, ditch, embankment, barricade or impediment.

It shall be unlawful for any person in the City, to raise the natural surface elevation of his land which, by reason thereof, tends to, or does, hinder, delay, obstruct or stop the natural flow or drainage of surface waters flowing upon the land by precipitation, and which obstruction causes any street or alley within the City limits to be flooded or damaged as the proximate result thereof.