Rock Hill, SC Landscaping Rules: Water Restrictions (2026)

Rock Hill's water-restriction framework is administered by Rock Hill Water Service (https://www.cityofrockhill.com/departments/utilities/water-service) and coordinated through the Catawba-Wateree Drought Management Advisory Group (CW-DMAG, https://www.duke-energy.com/community/lakes/drought-management-advisory/catawba-wateree-dmag) and the Catawba-Wateree Water Management Group (https://www.catawbawatereewmg.org/). The City's drinking-water source is surface water — intakes on the Catawba River and Lake Wylie pumped to the Rock Hill Water Treatment Plant on Cherry Road for conventional treatment. As the regional supplier, Rock Hill also serves wholesale customers in Fort Mill, Tega Cay, parts of York County, the Catawba Indian Nation, and other small private water systems. The Catawba-Wateree Low Inflow Protocol (LIP) is the operative drought-response tool for the basin and uses three indicators: reservoir storage, inflow to the reservoirs, and the U.S. Drought Monitor classification. The LIP has five stages: Stage 0 (advisory), Stage 1, Stage 2 (the first mandatory-restriction stage), Stage 3, and Stage 4. On May 1, 2026, CW-DMAG declared Stage 2 — the first basin-wide Stage 2 since 2009 — driven by the driest September-2025-to-March-2026 period on record (records since 1895). Stage 2 targets a 5-10% reduction in overall use across the basin's 24-county service area for 2 million people and includes a mandatory odd/even irrigation schedule: odd-numbered addresses water Tuesdays and Saturdays; even-numbered addresses water Thursdays and Sundays; unnumbered addresses water Tuesdays and Saturdays. Duke Energy additionally asks lake neighbors with direct withdrawal pumps to voluntarily limit irrigation to Tuesdays and Saturdays. The statewide statutory framework is the South Carolina Drought Response Act (Title 49, Chapter 23, §49-23-10 et seq., available at https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t49c023.php), which empowers the SC Department of Natural Resources (State Climatology Office) to convene the SC Drought Response Committee and local committees within each drought management area.