Outdoor watering restrictions in 25 water systems

Why this page covers twenty-five systems and not several thousand

The watering-restrictions tracker was planned as a national tracker. It is not one, and the reason belongs above the table.

EPA’s Report on the Environment puts more than 320 million people — roughly 95 percent of the U.S. population — on a community water system in FY 2023. There are on the order of fifty thousand such systems. Outdoor watering rules, where they exist, live on the retailer’s conservation page, in a drought-contingency plan, in a municipal code chapter, or in a water-management-district order. There is no common schema.

Inclusion for this launch pass: Large community water systems — or the regional authority that sets the residential watering rule for its member retailers — in drought-exposed states (California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Florida, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, Georgia), with a live conservation-rule URL retrieved on 5 September 2026. Not a national tracker of the roughly 50,000 U.S. community water systems. Not a scrape of every retailer inside a metro. Not HyreYard’s seven-state landscaper roster.

Population served is recorded only where the utility (or a primary disclosure) published a figure we could label. That is 3 of 25 rows, summing to 3,075,000 on those labelled figures. Some of those figures are retail, some are regional; they are not SDWIS population-served. HyreYard calculation of a national coverage percentage is therefore not published. “National” would be a number. We do not have that number yet.

HyreYard’s own landscaper roster covers seven states and is not used here. A store-based headcount is not a watering rule.

What the table actually shows

Assigned days are the plurality, not the universe. 12 of 25 systems — 48% of this compilation — tell a homeowner which days the sprinklers may run. The rest do not. Treating “watering restrictions by city” as if every large utility posted an odd/even calendar is a misread of the sector.

A permanent ordinance is not a drought stage. Dallas Water, Fort Worth Water, El Paso Water, Miami-Dade WASD, Sacramento DOU and TMWA assign days year-round. The Drought Monitor can improve and the assigned day does not move, because the trigger is the code, not the weekly map.

A drought stage is not always an assigned day. Phoenix Water has been in a Stage 1 Water Alert since 2022 and still assigns no watering days to residential customers; Stage 1 is education plus existing waste rules. Tucson Water is in Tier 2 of a Colorado River–aligned plan and uses high-use outreach and audits, not odd/even. SLC Public Utilities is in Stage 2 and asks residents to water one day less than they normally would; the mandate is on institutional meters.

The Drought Monitor and the utility stage are different switches. Raleigh Water lifted Stage 1 on 3 August 2026 after Falls Lake recovered; its 2 September 2026 supply page still places Central North Carolina in Severe Drought on the hydrologic classification. Charlotte Water, in the same state, remains in Mandatory Stage 2 on the Catawba Low Inflow Protocol, with two assigned overnight windows. Two utilities, two ladders, one drought map.

Denver is the sharpest current case in this compilation. Denver Water declared Stage 1 on 25 March 2026, assigned two days a week, and on 26 August 2026 set a formal end to lawn watering and spray irrigation from 1 October 2026. Trees, shrubs and perennials may still be hand-watered or drip-irrigated. That is a dated move from assigned-days to drip/hand-water, recorded in advance of the date.

HyreYard analysis: the comparable fact is not “how dry is it.” It is which instrument the retailer is using this week — a permanent calendar, a reservoir trigger, an aquifer well, a regional district order, a recommended budget, or nothing assigned. Water districts will not link to a lawn-care article. They will link to a table that puts their instrument next to the neighbouring one without flattening the names.

Four overlays that sit on top of the table

A homeowner can be bound by more than one instrument. Four of those instruments are statewide or regional. They are not extra rows in the retailer table, because they are not community water systems.

California AB 1572 — nonfunctional turf. California Water Code §10608.14 prohibits potable irrigation of nonfunctional turf on CII property and HOA common areas on a published phase-in. It does not apply to single-family yards. Recycled water and functional (recreational) turf are outside the ban. Tree health and immediate health-and-safety needs are carved out. Public/government property: 1 January 2027. Other CII: 1 January 2028. HOA common areas: 1 January 2029. Disadvantaged-community public property: 1 January 2031 or when state conversion funding is available, whichever is later. Every California row in the table carries this overlay. It does not change LADWP’s three-day residential schedule. It will change what a commercial median and an HOA common area may irrigate with potable water from 2027.

Nevada AB 356 — Colorado River water on nonfunctional turf. Nevada law prohibits using Colorado River water delivered by SNWA member agencies to irrigate nonfunctional grass on property not used exclusively as a single-family residence, beginning 1 January 2027. Single-family yards, cemeteries, and recreational turf at schools and parks are outside the mandate. SNWA’s assigned-group watering schedule is a separate, year-round rule. It is already in the table above.

Southwest Florida Water Management District — Modified Phase III. A water-management district order, not a retail utility ordinance. It binds residents including private-well users to one assigned watering day per week, with reduced hours, through 1 October 2026. Cities and counties may be stricter. This overlay is why a Tampa Bay homeowner can be on a one-day schedule even if their retailer has not published a separate stage. Last digit 0–1 Monday; 2–3 Tuesday; 4–5 Wednesday; 6–7 Thursday; 8–9 and no address Friday. Hours 12:01 a.m.–4 a.m. or 8 p.m.–11:59 p.m. unless the city is stricter. Properties under one acre may use only one window. Miami-Dade is not inside this district; it runs its own year-round two-day schedule under South Florida Water Management District alignment. A Tampa Bay address may be on the SWFWMD one-day order even if the city page is quieter than the district page. Check both.

Georgia Water Stewardship Act — statewide hours. Non-drought outdoor watering of ground cover, trees, shrubs or other plants is allowed only between 4 p.m. and 10 a.m. Drip, soaker, hand-watering with a shut-off, personal food gardens and several other uses are allowed at any hour. A Level 1 drought declaration does not, by itself, add assigned days. Atlanta DWM’s Level 1 declaration did not add assigned days on top of those hours.

Outdoor restrictions also sit on top of rate design — tiered volumetric charges, drought surcharges, irrigation-only meters. HyrePlumber owns the meter, backflow, graywater and the rate-design page. This page does not write that page. Denver’s Stage 1 drought charges and Austin’s conservation stage are recorded here only as the watering rule’s companion, not as a tariff study.

The Drought Monitor is context, not a watering day

The U.S. Drought Monitor map released 2026-09-03, data valid 2026-09-01, is the weekly classification used as context for this compilation. It is produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center, USDA, NOAA and NASA. HyreYard does not reproduce the copyrighted map as an asset. The official page is the source: droughtmonitor.unl.edu.

As of that map, 49.51% of the United States and Puerto Rico and 59.05% of the Lower 48 were in drought (D1–D4). Drought.gov’s current-conditions summary for the same week: 103.2 million people in the U.S. affected; 43 states in moderate drought or worse. Category shares of U.S. area: D0 18.7%, D1 22.4%, D2 17.5%, D3 8.1%, D4 1.4%. D0 is abnormally dry, not drought.

The week’s narrative, not a HyreYard finding: flash drought expanded from Texas into Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and northern Mississippi; moderate drought expanded in northern California; monsoon rains improved parts of Arizona, Utah and western Colorado. That is the map. It is not LADWP Phase 2, and it is not Phoenix Stage 1.

HyreYard analysis: a measurable escalation lag — weeks between a Drought Monitor class change and a utility stage change — is a real research question and is why a change log is the moat. This launch pass has one dated entry. It cannot yet support an average lag. We will not invent one.

A landscape water budget is not a watering day either

EPA WaterSense’s landscape water budget is a site-specific method: plant type, plant water need, irrigation design, precipitation. The baseline comparison in the WaterSense home specification is cool-season turf on spray irrigation. The tool is a design budget, not a city schedule, and it does not tell you whether your address waters on Wednesday.

Several systems in this table already think in budgets rather than days. IRWD bills against a monthly landscape budget. Albuquerque publishes “Water by the Numbers” as a recommended frequency and does not assign weekdays. Denver offers large irrigators a 2026 Water Budget Program as an alternative to two assigned days. Those are closer to WaterSense’s logic than an odd/even calendar is. They are still not a substitute for the ordinance that applies to a spray head this week. Once you know which days are yours, the sprinkler run time calculator converts a depth into minutes on the controller using a precipitation rate you measure yourself.