Arkansas HOA Water Conservation

Section 1: Overview — How water conservation interacts with HOA authority in Arkansas

Search Arkansas law, and no statute turns up limiting an HOA's authority over water-efficient landscaping. Review Title 18, including the Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq., and the related titles around it, and nothing protects drought-tolerant or xeriscape landscaping, native or low-water plantings, artificial turf, or water-efficient irrigation against an association's rules.¹ In place of a statute, water-related landscaping rules for Arkansas communities come from the recorded declaration and the association's architectural-control process, with the Horizontal Property Act supplying the framework for condominiums and the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq., supplying corporate formalities for associations organized as nonprofits.⁴ Local water-system rules supply whatever practical water-use limits actually exist.

There's a reason Arkansas sits where it does. It's a humid, largely water-abundant state with periodic dry spells rather than chronic drought, and it has never enacted the drought-driven landscaping legislation that took hold out West.¹⁰ The 2025-to-2026 dry spell was severe by Arkansas standards — total precipitation ran 13.7 inches below average from August 2025 through April 2026 — and even that produced no state landscaping rule.¹¹ The state does permit rainwater harvesting for non-potable use, under a systems-regulation statute at Ark. Code § 17-38-201, but that statute governs engineering and plumbing safety — it doesn't shield rainwater collection from HOA rules.² Separately, Arkansas water-resource and agricultural-water law, administered by the Natural Resources Division of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, governs who may withdraw water. It has no bearing on whether an HOA may regulate a homeowner's landscaping.⁵ Nationally, Arkansas falls among the silent, CC&R-governed states, a contrast to drought-statute states such as California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, and Florida. What follows sets out the framework, the obligations it places on associations, and the recent legislative and judicial activity.

Section 2: The statutory and regulatory framework

2A. Statutory limits on HOA authority over water-efficient landscaping

Search the Arkansas Code, and no provision restricts an HOA's authority over drought-tolerant or xeriscape landscaping, native or low-water plantings, artificial turf, or water-efficient irrigation. The two chapters that would carry such a provision, if Arkansas had written one, don't contain it. The Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq., governs the formation and administration of condominiums — or horizontal property regimes — and covers master deeds, bylaws, common elements, assessments, and insurance. It says nothing about landscaping or water use.¹ Planned-community HOAs have no comprehensive Arkansas statute at all, so there's no chapter where a landscaping carve-out could even sit.¹ And the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq., which supplies corporate procedure for associations organized as nonprofits, likewise says nothing about water or landscaping.⁴

The absence stands out more clearly next to states that have legislated. Neighboring Texas bars a property owners' association from prohibiting drought-resistant landscaping, water-conserving natural turf, efficient irrigation, or rain barrels, under Tex. Prop. Code § 202.007.¹² California, under Cal. Civ. Code § 4735, and Florida, under Fla. Stat. § 373.185, impose comparable limits on association authority over water-efficient landscaping. Arkansas has adopted nothing similar. The Texas comparison is the most instructive one, since the two states share a border — yet a Texas-style landscaping protection has no Arkansas equivalent, and a firm operating in both states can't assume the Texas rule crosses the state line. For Arkansas, the finding holds: no statute limits HOA landscaping authority for water-conservation purposes, and the recorded declaration remains the controlling instrument.

2B. Related water law: rainwater harvesting, graywater, drought response, and water resources

Arkansas permits harvested rainwater for non-potable use. Under Ark. Code § 17-38-201, the State Board of Health allows a harvested-rainwater system for a non-potable purpose as long as a professional engineer licensed in Arkansas designs it, it includes appropriate cross-connection safeguards, and it complies with the Arkansas Plumbing Code.² The University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service confirms that simple rain-barrel collection for outdoor use faces no restriction at the state level.¹³ This is a systems-regulation statute — it governs engineering, plumbing, and public-health safety. It does not limit an HOA's authority to restrict or prohibit rainwater-collection structures on an owner's lot, and no one should read it as a homeowner protection against association rules.² Graywater reuse works the same way. The Arkansas Plumbing Code (2018), Chapter 13, on nonpotable water systems, permits graywater from fixtures like showers and clothes washers for uses such as toilet flushing and subsurface irrigation, subject to design and treatment requirements. It regulates the systems and stays silent on HOA authority.³

Arkansas manages water resources and drought through the Natural Resources Division of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, which maintains the Arkansas Water Plan.⁵ Surface water gets allocated under a regulated-riparian system, groundwater under reasonable-use principles, with critical-groundwater-area designations layered on top. Treat this as background — it governs water allocation and withdrawal, and it has no bearing on HOA landscaping authority. No state drought-declaration function reaches into private HOA landscaping enforcement. That held up in practice during the 2025-to-2026 drought, when 99.5 percent of Arkansas fell into the moderate-to-exceptional drought categories, D1 through D4, as of late May 2026.¹¹ Even then, the enforceable outdoor-watering limits that followed came from local water utilities, not from any state rule touching HOA authority.⁶

2C. Where water-conservation rules actually live in Arkansas

For an Arkansas community, any water-related landscaping rule originates in the recorded declaration and the association's architectural-control provisions — the primary source for a rule requiring a maintained lawn, restricting artificial turf, or governing plant selection. For condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act supplies the general framework through the master deed and recorded bylaws.¹ For planned communities, with no comprehensive statute on the books, the framework is the CC&Rs plus the corporate formalities of the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993.⁴

Any owner-facing water-use rule is far more likely to come from a local water system than from state law, and these systems operate independently of the HOA framework entirely. During the 2025-to-2026 drought, Conway Corp moved its central-Arkansas customers from voluntary to mandatory curtailment on June 1, 2026 — Phase 2 limited lawn watering to designated days by address, enforceable under City of Conway Ordinance 0-99-74, with violations charged as a misdemeanor punishable by fine and possible discontinuance of water service.⁶ The Beaver Water District, which supplies Northwest Arkansas, runs a voluntary conservation program built around efficient watering and drought-tolerant native plantings.⁷ Central Arkansas Water, serving Little Rock and North Little Rock, promotes only voluntary conservation and education through EPA WaterSense and AWWA guidance, and had no mandatory outdoor-watering restriction in effect as of mid-2026.⁸ The operational takeaway is direct: a manager searching for "Arkansas HOA water conservation law" will find the rulebook in the declaration and in the local water system's rules — not in any HOA-specific water statute.

Section 3: What the framework requires of HOAs

A. Landscaping approval and architectural review

Authority over landscaping changes is contractual for planned communities — it arises from the CC&Rs and the association's architectural-control provisions rather than from any statute, since Arkansas has no planned-community statute at all.¹ For condominiums, the review framework comes from the master deed and recorded bylaws under the Horizontal Property Act, which the declaration may vary.¹ No statute requires an association to approve drought-tolerant landscaping, artificial turf, or native plantings, so an owner's ability to install any of it depends entirely on the declaration.¹

B. Drought response and watering restrictions

Any enforceable outdoor-watering restriction reaching an Arkansas homeowner is local — imposed by the water system or municipality, as with the Conway Corp curtailment ordinance during the 2025-to-2026 drought.⁶ These utility rules apply regardless of the HOA framework.⁶ No statutory drought-emergency provision suspends an HOA's authority to enforce landscaping covenants against a dormant or unwatered lawn.¹

C. Rule adoption and disclosure

For associations organized as nonprofits, rule adoption follows the corporate procedures of the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, covering board and member meetings, notice, and records.⁴ Recording obligations are contractual and record-based — an association's declaration and bylaws must be recorded in the county land records before they're enforceable.¹ Water-conservation rules gain their force from these instruments, not from any water statute.

D. Enforcement limits and conflicts

Covenant enforcement in Arkansas runs on general property law. Arkansas courts strictly construe restrictive covenants against limitations on the free use of land and resolve doubts in the owner's favor, which constrains an association tempted to read a landscaping restriction more broadly than its language supports.¹⁴ Where a CC&R demands a green lawn while a local water system imposes an outdoor-watering restriction during a dry spell, that tension plays out as a contract-versus-local-rule question, resolved under general law rather than any water-conservation statute.⁶ No statutory water-conservation defense exists for an owner caught in that position.¹

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills (past 24 months)

No bill introduced in the past 24 months would create or affect HOA authority over water-efficient landscaping, drought enforcement, rainwater harvesting, or graywater reuse. The 95th General Assembly's HOA-related activity in the 2025 regular session never touched water conservation.

A separate measure, HB1660 of 2025, would have regulated property owners' associations and required audits for certain associations. It died in House committee at sine die adjournment, and it never addressed water conservation either.¹⁵

B. Recent appellate rulings (past 36 months)

No Arkansas Court of Appeals or Arkansas Supreme Court ruling in the past 36 months addresses HOA authority over water-efficient landscaping, drought-related use restrictions, or rainwater or graywater practices. Arkansas covenant-enforcement law in this area continues to rest on the established principle that courts strictly construe restrictive covenants against restrictions on land use.¹⁴ Trial-level disputes proceed through the Arkansas Circuit Courts, with appeals to the Arkansas Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the Arkansas Supreme Court.¹⁶

C. Active legislative debates

No active proposal would change how Arkansas treats HOA water-conservation landscaping.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Line up the states on water conservation specifically, and three groups emerge — a different clustering than the one you'd get looking at governing statutes generally. The first group has statutes limiting HOA authority over water-efficient landscaping, concentrated in drought-exposed jurisdictions like California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Florida, and Utah. The second has partial or emerging provisions. The third is the silent, CC&R-governed group, which takes in most humid South-Central and Southeastern states, Arkansas among them.¹² For a firm operating across state lines, the practical point is simple: don't assume Texas's water-conserving-landscaping rules cross the border into Arkansas.¹² Arkansas shows no legislative momentum toward such a statute, and the 2025 session produced none.⁹

HOA Weekly's Arkansas water-conservation coverage updates quarterly as the legislature and the courts act. For Arkansas communities, the practically controlling water rules are the recorded declaration and the local water system. Federal frameworks apply to Arkansas associations regardless of state law — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act among them.

Footnotes

1. Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq. (official Arkansas Code, Title 18, Subtitle 2, Chapter 13) ↩
2. Ark. Code § 17-38-201 (harvested rainwater; State Board of Health), as summarized by US EPA REUSExplorer ↩
3. Arkansas Plumbing Code (2018), Chapter 13, Nonpotable Water Systems, as summarized by US EPA REUSExplorer ↩
4. Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq. (official Arkansas Code, Title 4, Subtitle 3, Chapter 33); Act 1147 of 1993 ↩
5. Natural Resources Division, Arkansas Department of Agriculture, Arkansas Water Plan ↩
6. Conway Corp, Water Curtailment (mandatory restrictions after June 1, 2026; City of Conway Ordinance 0-99-74) ↩
7. Beaver Water District, Water Conservation (voluntary "Beaver Believers" program; drought-tolerant native plantings) ↩
8. Central Arkansas Water, Conservation and Education (voluntary conservation via EPA WaterSense and AWWA) ↩
9. Act 516 of 2025 (SB323), To Amend the Horizontal Property Act, Arkansas State Legislature ↩
10. Drought.gov, Arkansas state page (humid sub-tropical climate; generally ample water) ↩
11. Drought.gov, Drought Status Update for Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, May 21, 2026 (99.5% of Arkansas in D1–D4; 13.7 inches below average precipitation) ↩
12. Tex. Prop. Code § 202.007 (Texas water-conserving landscaping statute), cited for comparison only ↩
13. University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, "Is it legal to collect rainwater in Arkansas?" ↩
14. Forrest Constr., Inc. v. Milam, 345 Ark. 1, 43 S.W.3d 140 (2001) (restrictive covenants strictly construed against limitations on free use of land), as discussed in Arkansas Court of Appeals authority ↩
15. HB1660 (2025), To Amend the Horizontal Property Act; To Regulate Property Owners Associations (died in House committee at sine die adjournment), Arkansas State Legislature ↩
16. Arkansas Judiciary (court structure: Circuit Court to Court of Appeals to Supreme Court) ↩