Owensboro, KY Landscaping Rules: Water Restrictions (2026)

Owensboro Municipal Code Chapter 26, Article III, Division 3 sets up a four-phase water shortage response under Sec. 26-61 for Owensboro Municipal Utilities (OMU), the city's public water purveyor. Phase 1, Advisory, is a voluntary call to conserve. Phase 2, Alert, is declared when OMU finds it cannot meet expected customer needs; it calls for voluntary conservation and imposes a mandatory outdoor watering schedule: addresses ending in an odd number may water outside only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and even-numbered addresses only on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Phase 3, Emergency, halts all outside water use, limiting water to drinking, sanitation, patient care, firefighting and other essential public-protection needs. Phase 4, Rationing, triggers Sec. 26-62, which allots metered residential customers forty gallons per resident per day, or fifty-five gallons for a single-resident household, and cuts nonresidential customers to fifty percent of their August 1987 usage, subject to a hardship variance process with appeal to the city's governing body. Enforcement under Sec. 26-61(h) starts with a written notice ordering the violation corrected; if uncorrected, OMU may terminate water service after a mailed notice and hearing. A terminated customer pays a $50.00 reconnection fee for a first violation, $200.00 for a second, and $300.00 for each violation after that.