Highlands County, FL Landscaping Rules: Water Restrictions (2026)

Article II of Chapter 7, the Highlands County Water Shortage Ordinance created by Ordinance No. 00-01-8, splits irrigation regulation into two layers. Under Section 7-20(a), whenever the Southwest Florida Water Management District or the South Florida Water Management District declares a water shortage or water shortage emergency under Florida Administrative Code Chapter 40C-21 or 40E-21, the specific restrictions that district imposes, including any watering-day schedule, automatically apply to the part of unincorporated Highlands County inside that district's boundaries and override any conflicting county rule until the district rescinds the order.

Section 7-20(b) separately adopts, permanently and year-round, the Southwest Florida Water Management District's Chapter 40D-22, Florida Administrative Code, as the year-round water conservation measures in the unincorporated area of the county for residential lawn irrigation, residential landscape irrigation, and related outdoor residential water uses such as car washing. Because both the emergency restrictions and the year-round measures are incorporated by reference rather than rewritten into the county code, a resident has to check the applicable water management district's own current schedule to know an assigned watering day; the county ordinance's role is to make violating that district schedule a citable county offense.

Section 7-19 defines an enforcement officer broadly as any law enforcement officer or authorized county agency representative, and Section 7-21 gives those officers immunity for reasonable, good-faith trespass onto private property, not including a dwelling, while investigating a suspected violation. The ordinance covers public and private utility systems, private wells and direct surface-water connections, but exempts application of treated wastewater effluent.