North Carolina HOA Irrigation Suspension During Drought

North Carolina General Statutes § 47F-3-122, part of the Planned Community Act, strips homeowners' association covenants of any power to force lawn or landscape irrigation once drought conditions are officially designated. S. S. 143-350) or the state Secretary of Environmental Quality must classify the association's area as severe, extreme, or exceptional drought, and a governmental body, whether the Governor, a state agency, or a city or county, must have separately imposed water conservation measures covering that area. When both conditions are met, an association's irrigation mandate is suspended by operation of law, with one exception carried over from before the statute existed: if the declaration of covenants was recorded before October 1, 2008 and its text specifically requires irrigation notwithstanding conservation measures, that older language controls.

Covenants recorded on or after October 1, 2008 work the opposite way: the declaration must affirmatively state that the irrigation requirement is suspended during imposed conservation measures, and any clause letting the association fine a noncompliant owner has to be printed on the covenant's first page in boldface, capital letters at least as large as the largest print used anywhere else in the document. The statute defines "landscaping" broadly, covering lawns, trees, shrubbery, and other ornamental or decorative plantings, so the suspension is not limited to turf grass.

L. 2008-143, s. L. 2015-241, s. 30(v), addresses only the duty to irrigate during a declared drought; it creates no separate right to install xeriscaping, drought-tolerant groundcover, or artificial turf outside a drought designation, and an association otherwise remains free to set landscaping standards under its recorded covenants.

An association that fines a homeowner for not irrigating during a Drought Monitor-designated severe, extreme, or exceptional drought violates G.S. 47F-3-122 unless its covenant specifically authorizes such fines. For covenants recorded on or after October 1, 2008, that authorization is void unless printed on the covenant's first page in boldface, capital-letter type no smaller than the largest print used elsewhere in the declaration; a fine imposed under a covenant lacking that formatting has no statutory basis and is unenforceable against the owner.