All 105 Kansas counties are under a drought declaration. Check your turf covenant
All 105 Kansas counties are under a drought declaration. Check your turf covenant
2026-09-10 · Kansas · Regulation
Every county in Kansas is under some level of drought declaration, and the covenant telling an owner to keep a green lawn does not have an exception for it. Governor Laura Kelly signed the updated proclamation on April 30, 2026, on the recommendation of Connie Owen, Director of the Kansas Water Office and chair of the Governor's Drought Response Team.1
The declaration
The proclamation placed 51 counties into watch status, 47 into warning and 7 into emergency — 105 counties in total. The emergency counties are Cheyenne, Decatur, Morton, Norton, Phillips, Rawlins and Stevens, all in the west and southwest.
It authorises state agencies to “implement the appropriate watch, warning, or emergency-level drought response actions assigned in the Operations Plan of the Governor's Drought Response Team.”
Owen's assessment was direct: “Recent rainfall has helped in some areas, but drought is far from over in Kansas. Conditions range from crop stress and elevated fire danger to growing water supply concerns.” The Governor noted that “while parts of eastern Kansas have seen significant rainfall, much of the state — especially western Kansas — continues to experience persistent precipitation deficits,” and encouraged “all Kansans to take proactive steps to conserve water.”
Where the friction starts
A state drought declaration does not itself restrict anyone's sprinkler. What it does is trigger the response framework that municipal water suppliers act within, and it is the city-level restriction that reaches a homeowner — a watering-day schedule, an hours restriction, or a stage-based ban.
Goodland, in Sherman County, adopted Resolution 2026-15 declaring a water watch in August 2026. Wichita has operated a permanent two-day-per-week sprinkler schedule since 2013. The pattern across the state is that restrictions arrive locally, at different stages, on different calendars.
Meanwhile the covenant in a Kansas subdivision typically says the owner shall maintain the lawn in a neat and attractive condition, and says nothing about drought.
The enforcement question a Kansas board has to answer first
An owner whose grass has gone brown because the city permits watering twice a week is not violating a maintenance covenant in any sense worth litigating. But “not worth it” is not the same as “cannot,” and Kansas gives the board an express route to the right answer.
K.S.A. 58-4608 provides that a board has no duty to take enforcement action where it determines that “the covenant, restriction, or rule being enforced is or likely is inconsistent with law,” or that “the violation was or is not so material as to be objectionable to a reasonable person or justifies expending association resources,” or that enforcement “is not in the association's best interests.” The same section requires that a board “may not be arbitrary or capricious in taking enforcement action,” and provides that a decision under those criteria for one circumstance does not set a precedent for future circumstances.2
That is the mechanism to use. A minuted board resolution suspending turf-colour enforcement while a municipal restriction is in force, stating the criterion relied on, is defensible, evenhanded, and expressly contemplated by the statute. Quiet non-enforcement is none of those things, and it builds a selective-enforcement problem for the season after.
What to change, and what not to
Separate colour from condition. Dormant turf is not dead turf, and it is not weeds, litter, or a collapsed fence. A board that suspends enforcement on green-ness while continuing to enforce mowing height, weed control and general tidiness is drawing the line where the drought actually falls.
Look at the irrigation covenant, if there is one. Some Kansas declarations require an owner to install and operate an underground sprinkler system. During a municipal restriction that provision requires an owner to own equipment they may not lawfully run on most days. It is worth reading before someone points it out.
Check what the declaration says about xeriscaping and turf replacement. This is where boards get caught in the other direction. Owners responding to permanent water constraints want native plantings, gravel beds and reduced turf, and a declaration that requires a minimum percentage of lawn, or that lists approved materials, blocks it. Kansas has no statute overriding such a provision — there is no turf-replacement law here of the sort several western states have adopted. If a board wants to permit xeriscaping, it has to do it through its own documents.
Do not forget the common areas. Association-maintained entry monuments, medians and detention basins are usually the largest irrigated areas in a Kansas community, and they are on the association's own water account. A drought year is when a board discovers whether its landscape contract has a water-restriction clause.
What to watch next
Watch for the next proclamation. Kansas updates these declarations as conditions change, and the county-by-county status determines which local suppliers move to a stricter stage. The status of your own county is the input to any board decision here, not the statewide headline.
Watch, too, for a Kansas bill on turf and water covenants. Several states have legislated to prevent associations from mandating irrigated lawn; Kansas has not, and nothing on the 2026 interim calendar suggests it is being studied.
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