>> No one in their right mind would run the sprinklers non-stop,
True. But if the law were about "gallons per household" or even "gallons per acre", you would be allowed to water your tropicals in pots!
Unless they measured the "acreage" of your pots.
Let's see: a 6" circular pot is 28 square inches = 0.2 square feet.
1 acre = 43,560 square feet
So a 6" pots is 4.51 micro-acres.
0.00000451 acres.
222,000 pots per acre.
As long as you're under a quarter-million pots, they "should" let you water them pretty freely.