California unincorporated profile
Outside the boundaries of incorporated cities and towns, the San Bernardino County government is the planning and permitting lead agency. That means county zoning, county building codes, and county environmental review apply directly — without a separate city layer. The county rules most likely to catch a project applicant off guard are listed below.
These San Bernardino County rules apply directly to projects in unincorporated areas of the county, with no city-level overlay.
Removing a Joshua tree now requires both county authorization and separate state permits with per-tree fees — a two-agency process that caught many desert property owners off guard when the state law took effect in recent years.
County ordinance protects certain desert native species — including ironwood and palo verde — even after they've died. Moving a dead ironwood for a grading project still requires county authorization.
The San Bernardino Mountains communities sit in extensive fire hazard zones, and updated maps now designate additional moderate and high zones beyond the very high areas previously mapped — expanding the regulatory footprint into areas that weren't covered before.
Three separate regional water quality boards have authority over different parts of the county — valley, mountain and desert, and eastern desert — and stormwater permit requirements and post-construction standards are not uniform across them.
The county adopted a vehicle miles traveled threshold for traffic analysis that is substantially less stringent than the standard the state recommends — a deliberate local policy that reduces how many projects require full travel demand studies.
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Screen an addressSource: Headlands Environmental — environmental site screening for California. Rules summarized from publicly available county codes and planning documents; project review counts indexed from the State Clearinghouse. For authoritative requirements, consult San Bernardino County directly.